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about that saved me.
    The traffic had become a sullen and glistening queue like it always does in drizzle. I was moving across the traffic lights, on red, when I did another half-step back, turned to wave. It happened all in a second. The nearest car’s engine boomed. Its side edged my calves and tipped me over. I heard Francie yelp. My trouser leg tore. Its tyres squealing, the bloody saloon streaked across against the red light and swung down East Hill.
    ‘Here,’ I yelled indignantly. ‘See that silly sod?’
    The lights changed to green. The traffic moved. Witnesses dispersed in the worsening weather. I grinned back at Francie. ‘I’m all right, love,’ I called cheerily. ‘Lucky, eh?’
    If I hadn’t been fooling about to make Betty laugh I’d have been . . . Keeping up a brave smile for Francie’s benefit, I made the opposite pavement and walked on before looking across the road to where Francie and Betty stood by the war memorial. I waved once, then the museum cut them off from sight. Only then did I start the shakes and lose my idiot grin. Luck’s great stuff, but it’s not stuff you can depend on.

Chapter 6
    E VERYBODY LUSTS , BUT differently. And it seems to me that lust’s main function is the pursuit of what you haven’t got. So nuns in their lonesome beds may not all crave similarly. Likewise, me and Jo were panting after different prey when we met at the Tudor Halt. I was super-consciously nervous about having luckily stayed alive. Tonight I’d be the perfect lady’s man.
    She was especially pretty, wearing a dark silk shawl and a late Victorian Neapolitan mosaic brooch, neat and minute. Her hair was ringletty, her face oval. Her lovely eyes had dark lashes ten feet long. She glanced about, amused.
    ‘You chose this place because of some antique, Lovejoy. I know you. And I’ve lost sleep achieving this Regency look.’
    ‘It’s not. Honest.’
    We bickered all through supper. Lovely candlelit grub in the nooky old joint, with a beautiful woman shimmering opposite. You can’t spend your time better, almost. I enjoyed her company even though I was sussing out the other diners, checking that Karl’s waitresses hadn’t transmuted into thinly disguised Mafiosi. Jo explained what the meal was – posh grub comes hidden under sauce – but knows me well enough to gloss over the grue. Finally I got Karl to bring me a cigar so they’d bring me one of the antique smoker’s companions. Jo laughed and clapped her hands.
    ‘I knew it, Lovejoy!’
    Found out. My face was red. This restaurant has an entire dozen of these lovely creations. Tonight I’d drawn the silver figure of a frog leaning on a toadstool. Remove the frog’s head and there’s a spirit reservoir. Decorative holes sprout spills for lighting your cigar with a grand flourish. Antique dealers often advertise them as ‘silver ornaments, incomplete’, thinking they’ve bits missing. Wrong. Buy them even though they’re little more than a century old, which isn’t much. You can still talk them off a dealer for an average week’s wage.
    Jo and I left the nosh-house holding hands. Karl’s an old Hanover man whose wry good night was as good as a body search. For six years he’s refused to sell me the smokers’ companions. But one day . . .
    ‘You love those old things, Lovejoy, don’t you?’
    ‘Yes. Same reason as I love you older women.’
    ‘Cheek.’
    She came in for a coffee, and told me enough about her friend Shona. Enough for me to find her, I mean.
    ‘You think it’s worth phoning her, love?’
    ‘It would only worry her, Lovejoy. And her bureau was probably insured . . .’
    Shona McGunn, I listed mentally. Teacher. Near Dubneath, Caithness. Single. House owner, etcetera.
    Jo stayed a long, long while. I was on my very best super-romantic behaviour, really gallant. As the fire died into embers and pitch night began I suffered fantasies about noises outside. Twice I got up to peer nervously into the darkness. Once,