Ten Word Game by Jonathan Gash

“Lord, save me from mine helpers!” Mostly she meant me. I knew how she’d felt.
    The steps came closer. I tried to flatten myself against the ivy-covered wall. A crone’s voice warbled, “Is anybody there?” A leaded window opened and an old dear’s head poked out into the gloom. She wore a mob cap and held out a Norfolk lantern. It’s really only a candle in a perforated cup. For a second I thought she looked directly at me, but her eyes must have been bad. She withdrew. My hands had gone dead. Slowly I started down.
    That night me and Belle delivered the painting – my stolen Spinning Woman forgery – to Drogue. He sold it for a fortune to some Dutch geezer. The Marquis claimed on the insurance, saying he’d had a genuine Vincent V. G. stolen, and received another fortune. The underwriters paid up, barely enough to buy two holiday villas in the south of France and another yacht. Everybody rejoiced except me, because Drogue welshed, didn’t pay me a farthing. See what I mean? Where is justice when you need her? A forger does a brilliant job, sells his superb work for a meal and a fewtubes of paint, and everybody else gets everything. I don’t think it’s fair. Quite honestly, it’s dishonest.
    Belle’s a kindly soul and I like her. She lives in a trailer home, what used to be called a caravan, out on the Peldon Marshes. Ghosts of Roman soldiers rise out of the sea mists there every high tide, so I don’t visit unless it’s a bright sunny day and the tide’s out. Not that I’m scared, really not, because ghosts are only primitive superstition. It’s just that I don’t like taking chances.
    She loves our town’s mayor, a happily married father of two. She lives with an accountant called Vernon who keeps proposing marriage. She turns Vernon down because she’s in love with … Join the dots and make sense of women. She has this dream of discovering some enormous scam – robbery, smuggling racket, bomb threat, whatever. She’ll unmask them with one bound, and the mayor will sweep her up and they’ll ride into the sunset. It will never happen.
    Vernon is decent, plays bowls for the county, writes for church magazines and helps in the Hospice. He cares for old folks, and every weekend visits Belle. Don’t get me wrong. They aren’t saintly and celibate, just oddly matched. Between times I fill in Belle’s aching void of loneliness, so to speak, and educate her in the world’s wicked ways. She feeds me pasta and goat’s cheese she creates from two nanny-goats on Peldon’s shore line. I don’t complain. I’ve lived among forty caged shrews, and count my blessings. She lends me a groat now and then, in payment for teaching her about antique jewellery.
    After my theft, three nobs got together. The Marquis of Wells, his pal Lord Featherstonehaugh (pronounce it Fanshaw to be classy) and the Marquis of Gotham were sick of their Old Masters being stolen. One had had his prize Titian nicked. Another lost anOudry painting, about 1753 give or take a yard, of a duck – no kidding; it doesn’t sound much, but it’s worth enough to stand for parliament, and maybe get elected. The last was the Marquis of Gotham, who waxed eloquent about his stolen Van Gogh. He actually sobbed on TV, the lying swine. He knew it was a fake, and where the original was in the USA. I watched him on the six o’clock news, the night before I went on the run.
    “I know there are allegations about its attribution,” he blubbed before the nation’s cameras. “But experts say it is genuine Vincent. I’ll pay seven million to get it back…” et lying cetera. I swear my paint was hardly dry. The pig had used phenolformaldehyde to harden it up, plus French craquelure varnishes. See how corrupt folk are?
    Then came the fatal words. The TV presenter smiled into the camera and said, “And here’s the man who will lead the noble lord’s bounty hunters. You’re just out of gaol, David, aren’t you?”
    This heavily built geezer