A Spoonful of Luger
Roger Ormerod
© Roger Ormerod 1975
Roger Ormerod has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1975 by Robert Hale Ltd.
This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
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Extract from Parting Shot by Roger Ormerod
1
I HAD sworn I would never go near the place again, yet there I was, fumbling off a 37 bus and heading into a case I hated even to think about. But these days the important clients don’t go for experience, especially when the packaging is old and battered and the contents disguised by its bulk. They look for the sprightly young men, leaping from the gleaming cars they’ve left on double yellow lines. I’d left mine at the breaker’s yard, and the £10 was my working capital. I had reached a point in my career where I was closer to begging than to choosing. It was this case, or starve.
They hadn’t moved the terminus any closer to the town centre. I trudged up the hill, the hold-all getting heavier every moment. It was a cold Saturday afternoon in early January, but my shirt was clinging to my back before I made it. Fortunately, the decision wasn’t heavy. The Bedford was the only hotel they had.
From the room they gave me the square was a ragged patchwork of market awnings, with surging humanity in between. But nothing had changed very much in ten years. Lloyds had a new glassy front and Woolworths had absorbed two adjacent shops. But the war memorial still presided over the central island and pointed a dipped flag at the public toilets. God, I loathed the place.
I didn’t remember Elm Lane, but they gave me directions at the desk. There was a bus you could take out to the new ring road, then you changed to a circular ... and probably froze while you waited for it. I decided to walk. There was a lot of spare flesh to walk off.
It was a mistake. I’m not the walker I used to be, and it was about two miles out. Not a pleasant route, either, past the dead railway sidings and the canal, past the gasworks ... it could have been any Midlands town. But it improved, and Elm Lane might well have been a lane at some time, and still kept its trees. It was part of the ring road now and the roadway had been widened. It was dusk when I got there. They had a bus stop right outside the house, but I hadn’t seen any buses.
Randall let me in cautiously. We’d fixed it up by phone, but he didn’t ask who I was, so I suppose it’s obvious. The wife, he said, was in the lounge. As he pointedly took me into the kitchen, I gathered we weren’t going to discuss it with his wife, but I had my own ideas about that.
It was a big old house and felt empty, like a concert hall with no music. I found myself walking softly. The hall was in patterned quarries, its area roughly the same as the whole of my bed-sitter. There was a wide staircase off at the rear. They had modernised the kitchen, with matching units everywhere and a coke boiler in the corner. Randall didn’t ask if I’d like to see the child’s room. I’d have declined, anyway.
He was trying desperately to be normal, though I could tell he was sizing me up. Too old, perhaps? Too flabby? There were all the formal politenesses. Had I eaten, would I care for coffee, and smoke if I liked. But his grey eyes had that haunted look of somebody trying not to think. He would have been about forty, slim, not clumsy but certainly not graceful. Maybe his face had been fuller the week before, and those lines round his mouth could have been new. He had difficulty in speaking. Every word had to be dredged from somewhere way back and forced forward into the light. His finger nails were dirty.
I sat down at the formica table and got out my pipe. He was doing something useless with the kettle, though I hadn’t agreed to coffee.
“Why me?” I asked abruptly.
He turned, looking pathetic. The direct attack had caught him unawares. “It’s something. Something to try.”
“She’s been missing a week ... ”
“A week ago yesterday,” he said quickly.
“And the police are on it. What good d’you think I can do on my own?”
“It’s your sort of job. Missing persons.”
“I’m an enquiry agent.”
He blinked. There was a new light in his eyes. “I’m not asking you to do it for nothing.”
“I make enquiries, I question people,” I told him. “I trace people who’ve left home. This is a nine year old girl. She hasn’t left home. There are no enquiries I can make.”
Her name was Dulcie, I knew. Small for her age, shy, withdrawn. From what he’d told me on the phone she might even have been a little retarded. She had gone to catch a bus, four miles from home. But she hadn’t got off it.
What the hell did he expect from me — miracles?
“But you can look.”
“I can look. I don’t want your money, Mr Randall. The police can do all the looking there is. They’re better equipped for this sort of thing.”
He didn’t want to think about the sort of thing it was. “I don’t care what it costs. It’s not the money, Mr Coe.”
“Isn’t it?”
But it was the money, and he knew it as well as I did. They had to feel they were hiring somebody to do something, if it was only peer into a few ditches, or roust out the local perverts. It was sufficient that I was big and bulky and on their side. They were buying hope.
But I couldn’t see any.
I should have told him I didn’t. It was plain robbery to accept his money. I looked into his frightened eyes.
“We’d better have a word with your wife,” I said. Maybe my voice was rough; he looked away.
She was sitting in the living room, but she could have been anywhere. This just happened to be a room with some furniture in it. Mrs Randall had one of those hard faces, and boney hands that didn’t keep still. But I wasn’t there to read her character. I sat down, because there was no point in waiting until somebody asked me. It was a soft chair, and I moved out onto the edge, so as not to look too relaxed. I was clear in the centre of her vision, but she didn’t see me. I glanced at Randall, who just shook his head.
Maybe he was telling me there was no point in trying to speak to her. If so, I ignored him. There’s only one way to do it; keep talking until you get through. It took ten minutes, then she began to come out with some reasonably connected sentences, and after one or two nods from me, and the usual encouraging sounds, she poured it out.
I took no notes. I don’t believe in it. For one thing, while you’re making a note on one point you miss the next. But more important than that — you can’t afford any lack of attention. They have to know you’re listening. You’re there, your eyes on them.
That went on for half an hour. Randall had lowered himself onto a pouffe and was watching me with such intent faith that I felt ashamed. I got very little out of it, but that hadn’t been the point. I was just being a good listener.
Dulcie had visited a friend. She had gone to a bus stop near her friend’s house, or at least everybody assumed she had. It was a circular route, along the ring road, and the one bus should have brought her home before six. Just after dark. She hadn’t been seen since. I knew all that. What I was after was hints, ideas, the names of acquaintances, gentlemen friends.
“Friends?” said Randall, out in the hall. He’d retained the idea to explore.
I looked at the inside of my hat. “She’s a shy girl, quiet, even nervous.”
“That’s why I can’t understand — “
“So if she accepted a lift in a car, say, it’d be somebody she knew. A friend.”
“Friend?” he said again. He seemed to be losing confidence in me.
I asked him about the buses back to town. He didn’t offer to drive me back, but that’s hardly surprising.
“Haven’t you got a car?” he asked. It was part accusation, part despair.
“I’ll hire one.”
“No.” He shook his head so violently that I thought he was considering the expense involved. “I’ll lend you one.”
“I don’t want your car.”
“I run a garage. It’ll be easy. You can take your pick of what’s there.”
That sounded useful. I asked him when and where I could do this picking.
It was a bit out of town, he said, on the east road. It wasn’t much, but it kept them alive. If I’d like to go along there in the morning — the Grange Garage it was called — he’d see me there. Say about ten?
“Sunday morning?” I asked.
“Somebody’s got to work the pumps.” His eyebrows went up as though I’d accused him of something.
He could be a belligerent little sod when he liked, I decided, the belligerence of a man who is basically fearful, even of people’s opinions. I wondered how much of Dulcie’s shyness and reserve had arisen from it, a realization that it’s best to lie low and say nothing. And beneath that, perhaps, an adventurous nature waiting for exploitation.
“Of course they have,” I assured him, and his eyes fell.
Outside, there was a bit of mist about, and the temperature was dropping. While I was thinking about my poor feet I saw one of their circular buses coming, so I crossed the road quickly and got on it.
This one was running in the opposite direction to the bus on which Dulcie should have arrived. I thought that at least I could get some idea of the territory involved, and settled down, lit my pipe, kept my eyes open, and saw nothing interesting or unusual. Somebody else would have worked all this out before deploying the police search.
Then abruptly I began to feel uneasy. I realized that I knew where I was. A small post office seemed familiar; a corner with a fish and chip shop jostled my memory. And they were not pleasant thoughts. The bus had been a mistake. Then we drew to a stop at a shopping complex, apparently a minute or two ahead of time because the coloured driver and conductor got out and began chatting. A row of bright new shops glowed in the mist, and a supermarket spread itself beside its car park. I leaned forward and polished the mist from the window, and relaxed. Nothing familiar there. The feeling passed. I turned my head, and on the other side of the road was a pub. The Crown. And it hadn’t changed by one fleck of paint. Alongside the Crown, Trenchard Street. I couldn’t see any street sign, but I didn’t have to. Ask me ten minutes before, and I’d have said I’d forgotten, but now I knew. Trenchard Street. It climbed a steady hill, elderly semis each side, all but one or two about half way up, which were bungalows, set back with a tree in each garden. Nice and quiet, with a rear view over open country for miles. I had sat and looked at that view when the air was clear on a fine April afternoon, and relaxed looking at it. When I hadn’t been looking at Anne.
I knew then that I couldn’t go on with this case. Coming back to the town at all had been bad enough, but this was drawing too close. Anne. She might — just might — walk round that corner any second. Why didn’t we drive on? What the hell were they chattering about, stupid black ...
The bus started. I found myself staring back until my neck ached.
I saw nothing more of the route, even missed the stop where Dulcie would have waited to get on. They dropped me where I’d get one back to town, he said, and I waited for some time. I don’t know how long. The cold was deep in my bones.
The market had disappeared and parked cars had taken its place. The dining room at the Bedford turned out to be a restaurant and was packed. The food was terrible. Afterwards I forced my heavy stomach into a booth in the lobby, and actually got as far as dialling Randall’s number. Then I put my tuppence back in my pocket, and went out to discover what they could tell me at the police station.
They hadn’t moved it, only rebuilt it. The reception was all light and welcome, with a sliding window and a bell-push in front of the desk. Everything was quiet. The old wanted poster on the wall had been preserved reverently.
They had a woman Station Sergeant. She smiled when I said I wanted to see whoever was in charge of the Dulcie Randall search. She used just the right amount of encouragement. After all, I might have come to confess.
“You can tell me.”
She hadn’t said he wasn’t there. I knew how it would be. He’d be just about living at the office on a case like this. I shook my head, and then I knew she’d recognized me for an ex-copper. There’s something about the way we stand.
“Inspector Bycroft’s busy.”
“Bycroft? Frank Bycroft?”
“Yes.”
I got out a card and gave it to her. “I think he’ll see me.”
She looked at it, looked back. Then she went away.
He’d see me all right, if only for old times’ sake. But what his attitude would be I wasn’t sure. He’d want to show me how important he’d become, maybe condescend a little to an ex-sergeant. Well fine, that didn’t worry me, just as long as I got what I wanted. But he had always been sharp, and he’d realize at once that I was superfluous in this case. He would resent wasting time on an interfering amateur.
She came back, and held open the little door. If I’d go up the stairs, turn right, it was the third on the left ... But Bycroft was at his open door when I got to the top, and his hand was stuck out before I’d got half way there. His expression was not welcoming, but his grip was still firm.
“I might have guessed,” he said, flicking my card in his left hand. “Any money in it, is there?”
I shut the door behind me. “I live.” There was no point in telling him that luxuries can become two tins of beans on toast instead of one. I was looking round.
“You’re putting on weight,” he told me. He was staring me up and down, taking in the age of the raincoat, assessing the touch of grey over my ears.
“It helps, in my line.”
It helps when you have to walk over people. You don’t need speed, just bulk. I reached over and took back my card. They’re expensive to print.
The office was modern. It had probably been stark and new a year or so before, but Bycroft had imposed his personality on it. His desk was chaotic, papers overflowing onto the floor. He’d cleared a patch in the middle for a folded newspaper with the crossword exposed. Two phones acted as paperweights. His low bookcase was bulging, half the stuff on its side, with Police Gazettes tossed in a pile beside it. The cabinet had the top drawer stuck open with files half in and half out, and one of his spare chairs had his coat over the back, on its seat his hat, which he’d sat on in a moment of absentmindedness. On the hat was a full ashtray. The other chair was cluttered with rolled maps and an open chess set, on which at one time he’d been working at a problem. There was a black cat asleep in a wire basket on the top of the filing cabinet.
He had always had a contempt for orderliness, except in the mind.
“Sit down, why don’t you?” he asked.
I laughed, and he moved round to clear off one of the chairs, stared at the chess problem, made a move, tossed it all on the other chair, and went back behind his desk.
“What brings you to these parts?” he asked, though the sergeant must have told him.
“Dulcie Randall.”
“Oh yes?” There was no encouragement. He wouldn’t want me around.
“I’ve been asked to lend a hand.”
“By Randall?”
“Yes.”
He’s got brown eyes under light eyebrows, and he could never do much about hiding their expression. I don’t think he tried.
“I’d be ashamed to take his money,” he said flatly.
“I expect
you would. But when I took this on I didn’t know who was in charge here.” I was being polite, see. “You got some good basic training,” I added, not wishing to overdo it.
“From you, George,” he conceded. “Then you’ll know there’s nothing in it for you.”
“Except keep Randall in touch. You’ll be too busy for that.”
“George Coe, messenger boy,” he said softly. He kept the disgust out of his voice, but it was there in his mind.
“The news,” I suggested, “is always eagerly awaited.”
“Even the bad?”
“If it has to be.”
We both knew that after a week it wasn’t going to be good.
“How far have you got?” I asked, and he grimaced at my persistence.
But he was willing to prove his thoroughness. He had a map on the wall. It was covered with coloured pins and a latticework of ribbons. Working outwards, they were searching, dogs, the lot. So far, they were concentrating on the Green Belt area to the north and east. They had questioned everybody they could conceivably approach, traced very nearly every car that had been seen around there that evening, traced bus passengers on the one she should have taken and obviously hadn’t. And so far — nothing.
“And the nutters?” I said casually.
I knew that he would have had to face it early on. You’ve got two courses. You can call in all the known perverts in the area and hope they’ll lead you to the child, or you can wait until you’ve got the child, and then have them all in. It’s a question of whether you’re playing on the chance that she might possibly still be alive, and if so how far you dare to lean on them without evidence.
“I want to find her first,” he said firmly, and I knew, at that moment, that he did not expect to find her alive.
“But I don’t have to wait,” I said. “I can drift around. Ask questions.”
“Making trouble,” he said sharply. “Clearing away the dross, you used to call it. You were always too tidy — did you know that? You couldn’t see anything lying around that you didn’t have to thump at until you’d got it tidied up. It’s not my way.” He smiled thinly.
A Spoonful of Luger Page 1