A Spoonful of Luger

by Ormerod, Roger

  “And you found him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “I phoned.”

  “This instrument?”

  “There ain’t any others.”

  “And all the lights were on?”

  “Just like now.”

  There was a nervousness about Tony Finch that was not entirely the result of shock, and I was not happy about the bland, open awareness in his eyes. Truth is not always accompanied by an unflinching regard.

  “As like or not they’ve been on all night,” Tony added.

  “Or something did come in,” Bycroft suggested.

  “No.” The lad gestured vaguely. “I looked.”

  “Before or after you found him?”

  “Before.” Tony swallowed. “Not after.”

  “Hmm!” said Bycroft. Then he turned away. “Better see what we’ve got, Bill. Then we can send this lad home.”

  What they’d got, first of all, was the small pile of stuff that Sprague had taken from the body. It lay neatly on the desk — a bunch of keys, house keys, ignition, he’d have plenty of those. A wallet with a lot of rubbish in it, two pound notes, a driving licence.

  “Out of date,” said Bycroft heavily.

  “The tax is out of date too, on his pick-up,” I said, clearing the air of detail. Sprague glanced at me with bleak warning.

  There was also a small leather pouch, two inches square, stitched around three of its edges. It was black with usage. Bycroft squeezed the edges and the mouth opened. Nothing fell out.

  “What was in here?” Bycroft asked. “Finch.”

  The lad had been leaning in the corner by the door. The shock was beginning to get through. He was shivering.

  “The key,” he jerked out. “Dennis’s key to that thing.” He nodded to the deed box on the desk. Bycroft looked at it with interest.

  “What’s he got in there, then? Tax stuff? Insurance cards?”

  Tony stared at him blankly.

  “Was he stamping your card?” Bycroft asked.

  I watched Tony working on it. Sudden anger rose in his eyes.

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “But the key’s usually in this pouch?”

  “Carried it on him,” Tony said sullenly. “Everywhere.”

  “Well he hasn’t got it now.” Bycroft looked at Sprague. “Something else to look for,” he said.

  “Out there!”

  “It’s missing, isn’t it?”

  “But it doesn’t have to be ... ” Sprague drew a breath. “It’d be just a little key, a kind of miniature Yale. Look at the size of the lock. The chance of finding it ... I’ll have it open in no time, key or no key.”

  “We’ll have it open,” said Bycroft reassuringly. “But it’s not the point. If our murderer took the key, we’ll want to know. The location of the key becomes important.” He smiled at me. Wasn’t I lucky to be out of it all? “Now,” he said, “Tony, if it’s not insurance cards, how about money? Was there usually much cash in the box?”

  “Look,” said Tony, “I worked in the yard. I didn’t hardly come in here. How’d I know what’s in it? Probably ... ” He waved his arms wildly “ ... log books or something.”

  “No,” said Sprague, “they’re here.”

  He had been going through the cabinet, not being the sort of man who can stand and watch. Two drawers were completely full of workshop manuals for about every car there is, which was only natural. In the top drawer he’d found a dozen log books on top of a typed letter dated 10 November. I peered over Bycroft’s shoulder.

  “I am enclosing log books of vehicles broken down for spares, as follows:”

  The first three numbers were in type, the rest added in ballpoint. Cleave had been complying with the law, but just hadn’t got round to the exhausting bit of sliding them into an envelope and posting them to the licensing office.

  “So it isn’t log books,” said Bycroft, tapping the deed box with a pencil. He glanced up accusingly at Tony. “Then it must be money.”

  “The money’s in the tea tin,” Tony said. “If you’d looked.” He was coming round.

  Bycroft raised his eyebrows, reached down the tea caddy from the cabinet, and lifted off the lid. Outside there was a worn willow pattern. Inside there was a roll of paper currency with a rubber band round it. Sprague bent over it.

  “There’s a note.”

  A slip of paper under the rubber band had typed on it:

  “Can’t make the two hundred. More later — with luck.”

  “Blackmail,” said Sprague in disgust. I looked to Bycroft for his disagreement. He didn’t speak.

  “Hardly,” I said.

  “What?”

  “It’s hardly a note to a blackmailer, is it? With luck. Nothing desperate about that.”

  Bycroft said: “He’s right, Bill.”

  “He was buying something,” I said. Sprague made an angry sound and sat down to count it, for the record.

  Bycroft said: “You’d expect that sort of money to be in the cash box.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a cash box,” Sprague said with contempt.

  “Then what the hell’s in it?”

  We looked at it. It was strongly made from pressed steel, not one of your flimsy tin things, and had one of those snap locks that engage like a slammed front door. Bycroft inserted a nail between lid and box. It was locked right enough.

  “Soon have it open,” he said. “We’ll take it round to the office.”

  He put his hand into the swivel handle and pulled, and nearly fell over the desk when it didn’t budge.

  A trace of pleasure was in Tony’s eyes. “It’s bolted to the table,” he said. “Did it myself.”

  It made a simple deed box into something of a safe. Nobody was going to be able to take it away unless they took the table with it.

  “Then unbolt it,” Bycroft said angrily.

  “Can’t do that.” Tony smiled. “The nuts are inside the box.”

  “Then you’ve seen inside it?”

  “There was nothing in it then. I tell you what,” said Tony with wild facetiousness. He produced a pencil from a top pocket and advanced on the table. “I’ll get a powered saw and make cuts here and here — “

  “Don’t scribble on the table,” Bycroft shouted.

  “You said you wanted to take it with you.”

  “Just leave it alone.”

  “Or I could bring an oxy-cutter in an’ melt the heads off the bolts,” Tony suggested, inspired. “Though it’d burn the table to a cinder. Mind you, you’d have your box ... ”

  “A hundred and eighty-seven pounds,” said Sprague mournfully, no doubt wondering why he was wasting his talents in the police force. He touched his forehead and winced.

  “Or,” said Tony, “you could use the duplicate key.”

  Bycroft was very gentle with him, considering.

  “What duplicate key?”

  “He’s got a spare, taped under the table.”

  Bycroft fell to his knees. He screwed his head under the table. I crouched down and joined him. You could see the four bolt heads holding the box, and sunk deeply into the wood, and against the inside surface of the end ledge a square leather pouch, held there with a wide strip of sticky tape. I reached over.

  “Don’t touch it,” Bycroft snapped.

  So I just watched. Bycroft inserted a finger nail under the edge of the tape and peeled it away. We stood up, me breathing a little hard, the pouch dangling from the nails of his finger and thumb.

  “You didn’t say,” he accused Tony. “You never said a blind word.”

  This pouch was a duplicate of the other, except that this one was nice and new, the leather grain still clean. Bycroft gingerly squeezed the edges and shook it.

  But there was nothing in that one, either.

  “I thought you said ... ” He was furious.

  Tony shrugged. “I didn’t know it hadn’t got a key in. I just spotted it there when I did th
e bolting job.”

  “Which was when?”

  “Two or three months ago. Did a good job, didn’t I?”

  “Oh fine, son, fine.”

  They sent him off just after that. Tony seemed to have recovered considerably from the shock. I went out after him and watched him climb on his bike. He turned and saw me watching and gave an unfriendly signal. I hoped his saddle was ice-cold.

  Then I wandered off casually to have a look round, if only to establish my independence. Bycroft wasn’t going to involve me in his power-struggle with Sprague, not if I could help it. I peered into the sheds and worked my way along them, just wasting time. There was nothing that I had not expected.

  Cleave had stripped down crashed and worn-out vehicles, salvaging any useful spares. One shed contained rows of rear axles and wheels, the next engines, the next dials and gauges, and so on. There was a nearly empty one with a normal work bench, a spray plant, and the oxy-cutter Tony had mentioned. Presumably they had worked in there when it rained. It was high and roomy. I went back out into the yard and strolled around, because I didn’t want to go back and watch Bycroft in action.

  There had been something that Tony Finch was holding back. I didn’t want to think about that, because it got me nowhere with Dulcie, but that had been masking tape holding the second pouch in position.

  It was two more hours before Bycroft and Sprague packed in. I watched the lights go on in the rest of the bungalow as they went through it. I waited, stamping up and down, listening to the masses of metal creaking in the frost.

  Sprague left first. He stumped across the yard, deviating when he saw me so that I was in his direct course. I stood still. I’m heavier than him. He limped round me, and I was still in exactly the same spot when Bycroft left, after sealing the building.

  “You still here?”

  “Waiting for a lift. Find anything?”

  “The bungalow had been ransacked.”

  “All of it?”

  A complete search usually meant that the searcher had come to the end disappointed, a part search that he’d found what he was after.

  “Most of it.” He looked at his watch. “Better get back. Plenty to think about.”

  It was very quiet, with just an odd man left by the gate to watch. The town was an orange glow in the mist.

  “Maybe you could spare a thought for Dulcie?” I said.

  “I hadn’t forgotten.”

  “You’re not searching for her,” I insisted. “You’re going to take men off that and put them in this yard, looking for some piddling key and a gun that won’t be here. You’ve about forgotten Dulcie Randall.”

  He stood in the yard, his breath steaming, and looked around.

  “Have I?” he said.

  3

  SUNDAY morning, and the place had died. Odd cars trickled through the square, and a few old men leaned over the guard rails, spat in the gutter, waiting for the pubs to open. Frost lay thick on the bowling green next to the church. One coffee bar was open, and a pro was taking an off-duty stroll around the square, airing her dalmatian. She stopped to chat with the old men, and they laughed, but it was Sunday morning and it was all in the past.

  I went for a coffee. “Sharp this morning,” she said as she handed it over. I nodded, and went to sit in a corner. I was reluctant to get going. I looked at my list. Eight perverts, seven of them running around loose. I had a yearning to belt somebody. The trouble was, the one to be belted was probably dead, and I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm about the others.

  I decided to pick up my car.

  She told me I could take a short cut through the park, if it was open. But the gates were locked and I skirted it, and found another of those devastation areas, ready for something imposing in concrete, probably a branch of the motorway. Randall’s place was only half a mile away, on the ring road, nicely situated for one of those ‘last before the motorway’ signs.

  “Any news?” he said.

  “You’re well placed here,” I told him.

  He was wearing white overalls and was running the pumps alone. It was an agency for one of the leading brands, with self-service pumps. All he did was sit and count in the cash, but he came out onto the forecourt to show me his row of cars for sale.

  “You got a pull with the council?” I asked.

  “Nobody tells me what’s going on,” he complained, refusing to be diverted.

  “I’ll be able to do that.” I stared along the row. “They’re looking. It’s a big job. It takes patience.”

  “Patience!” he said. “Christ!”

  “You ought to be home,” I told him. “Have you had the doctor to see your wife?”

  “He’s been round every day. But what’s happening?”

  I walked ahead of him. There was a nearly-new Saab I rather liked. I tried another diversion.

  “There’s been a murder.”

  I turned. He’d been pattering after me, but now he had stopped. His mind was groping for it, trying to insert the significance of a murder into his consuming concern for Dulcie.

  “Hadn’t you heard? A shooting.”

  He shook his head.

  “A man called Cleave,” I said. “A car breaker.”

  “Not Dennis Cleave!”

  I stood with my hand on the bonnet of the Saab. A car slid in beside the pumps. He was staring at me, not believing. I told him he’d better get back or they’d pinch his petrol, and he turned away. He went slowly, then broke into a run. My hand had stuck to the metal.

  When he came back I was trying the fit of a Victor. It felt fine. I need a wide seat.

  “You mean Dennis has been shot?”

  “In his office. Probably Friday night. Did you know him?”

  He flicked his hand in irritation. “I’ve got a repair shop here. Of course I know him. I got spares from him.”

  “Second-hand spares for work on your customers’ cars?”

  There was a sign of that belligerence again. “And why not? So long as they know. Sometimes they’re first rate, from crashes. Why not?”

  “No reason at all,” I assured him. I got out. I’d decided on the Victor. I slammed the door, not looking at him. “Did you know he was a pervert?”

  When I turned he was staring at me in disbelief. Then he tried to dismiss it with a feeble laugh. “Oh come on! That wasn’t Dennis. Everybody knows that. It was in the papers. You can’t hold it against a chap ‘cause he was questioned.”

  “I’m not. When was he questioned?”

  “A couple of years ago. Now look, Dennis didn’t have anything to do with Annabelle Lester. It was proved. He was somewhere else.”

  “Who’s Annabelle Lester?”

  He looked resentful. “A girl. About fifteen she’d be then. She ... went missing.” Now he was scared. It was too close. “When they found her ... well ... she’d been raped — and she was dead. You know ... ” I nodded while he swallowed. “Dennis was only one of the people they questioned. One out of dozens. And he was miles away at the time. He’d got an alibi.”

  “Had he?”

  “Oh yes. Certainly he had. Now you can’t come here saying ... ” He tailed off, his eyes hunting.

  “That he might have been a pervert?”

  “Yes. Saying that.”

  “But they questioned him, Mr Randall. You said he had a good alibi. Think about it. They’d have had him in for questioning because they knew what he was like. He must have needed an alibi.”

  “No,” he said, and started walking away. I kept pace. He was moving his hands wildly. “I won’t have it.”

  “What will you not have?”

  “That he had anything to do with Annabelle Lester.”

  “I didn’t suggest that.”

  “Because he’d got this alibi. You don’t seem to understand. It was somebody he met in Wolverhampton or somewhere ... Some absolute stranger. I mean — no connection at all. You get my point?”

  Oh, I got his point all right. It didn’t sound like one
of those shaky things fixed with a mate in a pub.

  He looked sourly at me, perhaps realizing he’d defended Cleave too forcefully. “No.” He sat down behind the console he used for saving himself legwork. “Do you want a car or don’t you?”

  “The Victor.” I watched him reach behind to a rack and get me the keys. “You couldn’t believe it was true, because he was a friend?”

  He was annoyed at my persistence. “Friend? What’re you talking about? I knew him. Yes, I saw him a couple of times a month. That’s about all. No friend of mine.”

  “Certainly not close enough for you to have got the idea he might be dangerous?” I tossed the keys. “Is there any petrol in?” It was an important consideration, with my wallet so thin.

  “Fill it up,” he said angrily, “for free. Here ... now wait a minute. Don’t you walk away from me. What’re you getting at?”

  I paused. “I’m not getting at anything. I’m saying that Dennis Cleave had some interesting views on sexual behaviour, and if you hadn’t been so bloody high-minded about it and told yourself it couldn’t be true about Dennis — not Dennis Cleave — you’d perhaps have had the sense to steer your own child clear of him. But no, you weren’t going to let yourself believe it, so I don’t suppose you took any precautions at all. You might even have had Dulcie with you once or twice when you went down to his yard — perhaps she was here when he called.” I didn’t take my eyes off his distress. “Even had him home for tea.”

  “No!” he said violently.

  “So perhaps she was waiting at the bus stop. Uncle Dennis driving past ... ” I smiled. It isn’t always easy.

  “You’re not suggesting — ”

  “I’m playing around with ideas, Mr Randall. I’m hoping this one’s lousy.”

  Then I went for the Victor. As I said, I wasn’t in the mood. But somebody was going to put the idea forward, maybe Bycroft. I scraped the frost from the windscreen, filled up, and didn’t bother with the stamps. As I drove away I waved towards the window from which he was staring. He did not wave back.

  Then, seeing I was already on the ring road, I kept going. What else was there to do? Ten minutes later I was assisting the police by standing on the grass verge and listening to the shouts as they pressed through the undergrowth. This was Green Belt area, and, I suppose, the most likely place they’d find her. Assuming she’d waited for a bus on the inside of the circle, which she had obviously intended to do, she would most likely have been picked up — if she had been — by somebody driving in the same direction. This would bring them here, where the town fell away to spreading expanses of pines and deep hidden valleys of quiet farms. If, and maybe, and possibly.