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Lovejoy.’
    I started to ask how he’d managed to get in without a key, but remembered the silver paten in my cistern and shut up.
    My cottage stands on the side of a little wooded vale on the outskirts of a village a few miles out of town. It is truly rural, as house agents say, meaning cheap and gungey, but I was glad to see the old heap in its tangle of weeds. The village council told me off last autumn for having a garden that always looks back-combed. I’d lost us the Best-Kept-Village-in-East-Anglia Competition by my display of ‘horticultural negligence’, and unreasonable hatreds had smouldered against me ever since because that cardboard cut-out toytown near Melford won again. They polish the pavement.
    I stepped out, grinning like an ape and taking a deep breath. Your own smog’s always best for breathing, isn’t it? A giant Bentley on the gravel path dwarfed my thatched dwelling.
    ‘Lovejoy, I presume.’ This elegant stoutish man was in my porch (get the point?
My
bloody porch). He was smoking a cigar, his waistcoat chained in with baubled gold. Maybe ten years older than Lena, he wore that sleek air of affluence you only see on politicians and butchers’ dogs. I’d never seen a cleaner bloke. His teeth looked dry-cleaned, his shirt a facade of polished marble. You could tell my grubbiness unnerved him. To preserve the sterility of his podgy-bacon hands, he carefully avoided shaking. ‘I’m Mr Heindrick.”
    Good old Kurt waved me in, bloody cheek. I heard him say to his bird, ‘Lena, my dear. The interior is rather . . . unappealing. Perhaps you would care to wait in the Rolls?’
    ‘I’m curious, Kurt,’ her bored voice cut in as she swept past.
    ‘As you wish, my dear.’
    The Heindricks were making me feel like a specimen in a jar. I admit the place is always a bit untidy and they had got me off Ledger’s hook, but I can get very nasty when I’m narked, and they were narking me at a worrying speed.
    The cavalcade followed me into the main room, Kurak with them.
    ‘Sit down, please, Lovejoy.’
    Kurt seemed to change as I looked around the familiar interior. The police must have done a thorough search, in their own inimitable style. Like customs men, by law the Old Bill don’t have to tidy up after shambling your things. My kitchen alcove was strewn with crockery and pans. I only have one set of curtains and they were in a heap. The place was a wreck.
    Mrs Heindrick stood gazing round in awe. I swept some old newspapers off a chair for her. She sank gracefully on to it, not losing poise.
    ‘Why do you cut them up, Lovejoy?’ She meant the papers.
    ‘Important bits about antiques.’
    ‘So this is where it all happens!’
    ‘All what?’
    Kurt posed before my cold fireplace like a Victorian father about to pronounce. ‘Mrs Heindrick means your nefarious dealings, Lovejoy.’
    Being up so long was taking it out of me, but I wasn’t having that. ‘Look, mate,’ I said tiredly. ‘Nobody calls me neffie and gets off without a limp. I’m no better and no worse than the rest. Okay, so you sprung me. I appreciate it. But I don’t take kindly to being sneered at.’
    Good old Kurt looked interested. He smiled and apologized with grace. ‘You will forgive, I hope. An older man sometimes finds difficulty recognizing the values of a . . . a person so much younger than himself.’
    He nearly said ‘scruff’. I’d have scruffed
him
. Instead I nodded. ‘Accepted. Well, folks. Thanks for the rescue and all that. Now I suppose you’ll be going.’
    Nobody moved. Kurt said, ‘You’re wrong, Lovejoy.’ I looked round. Kurak stood by the door. The woman was half-smiling, observing me with her head tilted. Nobody was going anywhere yet.
    ‘Wrong?’ I guessed.
    ‘Your description of yourself is completely false.’
    ‘What are you on about?’
    ‘Saying you’re no better and no worse than the rest.’ He smiled quizzically round at me. ‘You are exactly both, Lovejoy. There’s no