Read Online The Sleepers of Erin by Jonathan Gash - Free Book Online

selling is ruinously wrong. You might as well just throw the stuff outside to the rag-and-bone man. At least he’ll give you an honest donkey stone for it. A shoal of antique dealers and auctioneers won’t.
    ‘More blackmail?’
    ‘Yes.’ He smiled and decanted sherry – the Kurts of this world do not simply pour – while Lena pressed the cakes on me. She was watching me nosh with a kind of appalled awe, but it was all right for her. Women don’t get hungry, only peckish. ‘It has become a matter of urgency. If you will go about throwing people off footbridges and talking to the careless Joxer . . .’
    ‘Have you had me followed?’ There was even a peacock on the lawn, radiantly displaying its fan. Lena Heindrick saw me looking and smiled.
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Okay. Where do I go?’
    ‘You’ll find out when you arrive.’
    ‘Why can’t whatever’s there be fetched here for me to suss out?’
    ‘Why do you suppose it’s only
one
thing, Lovejoy?’
    ‘Mrs Heindrick hinted,’ I said, wondering if that was true.
    ‘Very lax of us all, my dear,’ Kurt said without admonition. ‘But especially Joxer.’
    Lena shrugged, an attractive business. She had dressed for the interview in a neat black dress with only a late Georgian alexandrite brooch for ornamentation. Plain matching belts go in and out of fashion, but she wore one, the right touch of disdain towards those birds who need to conform to prevailing styles. I could have eaten her. Kurt was as clinical as ever, stencilled in a Savile Row jacket and city trousers. It was as Joxer said. Clearly she was in control, Kurt the mere business end of the team.
    ‘You will be given your ticket and an allowance on the journey, Lovejoy.’ Kurt came near to cracking a joke by adding, ‘Performing our task will keep you out of mischief, no?’
    ‘Only possibly, Kurt,’ Lena smiled.
    Kurt chuckled at that, his flabby jowl undulating. I watched, fascinated. Why didn’t his starched collar sever his jugular? But I got the joke. ‘Only possibly’ meant a rip, a scam, a lift, something illegal anyway.
And I knew it was in Kilfinney
, wherever that was. My one concealed trump card.
    Then Lena shook me by catching my hand as I reached the
n
th time for the proffered plate. It had one cake left, but that was Lena’s fault. Posh cakes are only little and don’t fill you.
    She said, ‘One thing, Lovejoy. Sister Morrison?’
    ‘You mean outpatients?’ It was a good thought. That sombre-eyed lass would go berserk if I failed to make the appointment.
    ‘No. Your relationship with her.’
    ‘Nothing I can do about that. It wasn’t my fault she ballocked me most of the time. Why?’
    She smiled then and let me reach the grub. ‘Only that she has called twice at your cottage.’
    ‘She did?’ I said blankly. ‘Probably to confirm my clinic appointment, something like that.’
    Kurt interposed, on cue. ‘The fewer encumbrances the better, Lovejoy, while you’re working for us.’
    I stood then but kept my temper out of respect for the delectable antiques all around. Nobody tells me who can call at my cottage and who not.
    ‘Who says I’m working for you?’
    Kurt chuckled. Lena looked me up and down with amused insolence. ‘Me,’ she said softly. ‘Kurak will call for you at midnight, four days from now.’
    ‘Not me, mate,’ I told her, and left.
    They saw me crunch down the avenued drive. Kurt must have given some signal because Kurak stayed leaning against the Rolls and watched me go.
    I got a lift from a school football bus, coming back from a match. They’d lost six-nil. If I’d half the sense I was born with I’d have recognized the omen, but not this numbskull. Within seconds of being dropped on North Hill I was in the Marquis of Granby pub phoning the hospital to bleep Sister Morrison and claiming it was an emergency.

Chapter 8
    Sister Morrison was not keen on coming off duty straight into a pub so we met by the post office. She came driving up