Free Spend Game by Jonathan Gash

and glanced at the copper. By the time he had phrased the request I was inside. The warehouse is one large ground-floor rectangle of plank flooring.An auctioneer’s stand is positioned against one long wall opposite the doors, and a curtained space shows burglars unerringly where to search for next week’s accumulating stock of dubious antiques. I switched on the lights, because an auctioneer’s natural preference, like Dracula’s, is towards an all-concealing gloom. The light from the two bare bulbs just made it to the far corner, where an Edwardian copy of an escritoire had been split and practically shredded by aggressive but meticulous hands. I crossed over and sorted the bits. A real hatchet job, done in a hurry by people bent on plunder. The only recognizable piece was a Bramah lock still stuck to its wood.
    ‘They came with the right tools,’ Wilkie grumbled, which was just what I was thinking.
    The quack’s bag was a small elongated leather job, very like a bowling bag. Its contents were scattered and the base was slit lengthways.
    ‘Don’t touch. The Old Bill’s going to look, just as soon as he’s ready.’
    I grinned at Wilkie’s sarcasm. One way and another our local antique whizzers like Wilkie and his merry crew have pulled off more illicit deals than the rest of the world put together. They do it naturally, like breathing. I crouched down and began assembling the doctor’s gruesome instruments.
    ‘Here, Lovejoy –’
    ‘Shut up.’
    I replaced them in the bag. The clip had been broken, so it couldn’t fasten. By the time I straightened up Wilkinson was on tenterhooks, but was wisely keeping watch on the uniformed lad. Nodge was hovering on the ramp and trying to peer in at us while the bobby scrawled away. A book, marked witha sticker to show the same lot number as the bag, lay underneath the pedals of a decaying piano. I scraped it out with my foot. The binding had been expertly split down the spine, whether from spite or as part of a search I couldn’t be sure. A name was written on the flyleaf, DOCTOR CHASE OF SIX ELM GREEN .
    ‘Wilkie.’ I gave him the bag and book, keeping my back to the daylight in case Nodge’s bleary vision reached this far. ‘Into my crate on the sly.’
    ‘Here, Lovejoy,’ he croaked, furtive eyes instantly on the doorway. ‘I don’t want no trouble –’
    ‘Money,’ I interrupted pleasantly, which shut him up. I find that word cairns the most troubled seas. ‘One other thing. Was anything nicked?’
    ‘That Cruikshank picture.’
    ‘Big deal.’
    Some things you can be absolutely sure of in antiques. One is that minor artists will get copied and faked from now till Doomsday. Virgil’s chief auctioneer Cecil Franklin had been exhibiting the Cruikshank picture for three weeks, boasting of its authenticity. It was allegedly a Georgian print done by Bob and George Cruikshank, showing two elegant blokes playing a prank on a night watchman in a London street. The faker had got their clothes wrong – the commonest mistake a forger ever makes in manufacturing this sort of print. The two characters were Tom and Jerry. Not the cartoon creatures, but the originals, Jerry Hawthorn and his cousin Corinthian Tom, who were pranksters widely publicized in Georgian London. Their favourite trick was creeping up on a dozing watchman ‘Charley’ and up-ending his sentry-box, laying face down so he couldn’t get out, and then running like hell. A lovable pair.
    ‘And give me the address of the vendor,’ I added. ‘Slip it in the book.’
    ‘Watch out,’ Wilkie hissed, sensing the policeman’s approach. I broke away and went forward, smiling and full of those questions a perturbed member of the public naturally asks when confronting mayhem. Wilkie would get the stuff undetected into my car boot somehow. The fact that it’s always locked would be a mere detail to an honest whizzer like him.
    I didn’t give Wilkie or the warehouse another glance while I asked the