And," she added brightly, "you can say you're sorry, Lovejoy. Think how nice . . ."Now I'd got a blinding headache. "Can I have that drink, please, Bea? And an aspirin?"Later I left Beatrice's and phoned Lydia from Charley's, the pub next door. This local nickname means any pub called the Black Buoy. Black Buoy because it sounds like Black Boy, meaning the dark-haired escaped Prince Charles, and that the pub's regulars were secret royalists. Later Charles II of Nell Gwynne fame. She told me to ring a number about ten o'clock for Sandy, and that Tinker had at last reached the cottages at Salcott marshes."Oh, aye?" I hadn't forgiven him for the police-cell episode."He wants to know can he please go home?"My helper. "He's got no home," I said sourly. He currently lives in a derelict market van near the flour mill. "He'd only get sloshed. He can get just as drunk on the waterside," I argued, getting even more narked at the lazy old devil.Lydia hesitated. Here it came, the seductive wheedle.
