A Spoonful of Luger

by Ormerod, Roger

  He moved his head, cocked it, half turned back to the window. “They’re here now,” he said, and he almost smiled. “How’d it be if I promised?”

  I heard the car draw up. I’d got a few more seconds in which to dig Bycroft out of his dead end.

  “And how did you give it to him?” I asked, as a car door slammed outside.

  His father left to answer the door, anticipating a bit. Tony shrugged.

  “He asked me if I could bust open the box.”

  “This was on one of his visits with a stolen car?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said quickly, sensing the urgency. “I said nothing doing, so he asked about a key. That was a couple of jobs ago, and ... well, I’d seen that spare pouch, so I said I’d get him the duplicate, for when he came next time.”

  “Only it’d cost?”

  “Five quid.”

  “Seems cheap. But the inspector’s going to ask you if you made a copy for yourself before you handed it over.”

  “Eh?”

  “Because the one key was down Cleave’s throat, the box was locked with the gun in ... ”

  “What the hell’re you talkin’ about? What copy?”

  There were voices in the hall.

  “ ... and the duplicate was in Norman’s pocket,” I pressed on quickly. “And seeing Norman had been dead for a week, we’ll need to know how that box was — ”

  The door crashed open and Bycroft strode in. He was furious.

  “By God, George, I’ll have you inside for this. Obstructing the police — ”

  “Nonsense. I’ve got him to admit it was he who gave Norman the duplicate key. Norman had been delivering another car. Tony got the key for him.” I smiled. It was like whistling in the face of thunder. I’d really upset him. It had been a risk, getting there first. But I’d got things moving, and I’d got information that Bycroft would never have passed on to me.

  “All right!” Bycroft’s mouth hardly moved to release the words. By a conscious effort he turned to Tony. Some of his fury spilled over onto the lad.

  “So you gave Norman Lyle the duplicate. Your boss is dead, and you’d given his deed box key to somebody else, and it didn’t occur to you that I’d need to know!”

  Tony was floundering, confused, and groping for it. It was not encouraging that he’d faced me without faltering, but one word from Bycroft and he’d gone to pieces.

  “I ... didn’t think.”

  “Then think ... now. Did your friend Norman own a gun?”

  Tony stalled desperately, not answering the question. “Friend? He wasn’t a friend.”

  “Did he own a gun?” Bycroft was stubbornly pursuing his twin theory.

  Tony looked at me. I grimaced, not leading him. Tony suddenly shouted: “But he was dead!”

  “So you assumed that Cleave was safe from him. How did you know Norman was dead?”

  “He told me.”

  I tried to frown him into silence. He was admitting too much.

  “He being Cleave? You’re saying Cleave told you Norman Lyle was dead?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “How did he say it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Quietly, sadly, triumphantly?”

  Tony shrugged. “Just said — kind of philosophical, I suppose.”

  “So you’d know he wasn’t in danger from Norman any more?”

  “I told you. Norm only wanted to get into the box.”

  “That’s what you said. But there was still Mike.”

  “Mike!” Tony shouted. “What’s this Mike — Mike?”

  “Well,” said Bycroft, “you got the key for Norman. Norman was dead. But Norman could have given it to his brother, in which event Mike could have turned up. Weren’t you expecting Mike?”

  Tony flapped his arms in exasperation. “Expect? I don’t know what I expected.”

  “Trouble, certainly. You must have been expecting Mike, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone round to the yard this last Saturday, expecting a stolen car to have turned up. Norman had been dead since the previous Saturday. So you could only expect Mike, if anybody.”

  “If you say so,” said Tony wearily.

  “But it matters,” Bycroft warned him. “Just think about it. You gave a key to a man you knew had a gun — ”

  “No, no!” Tony interrupted wildly. “I didn’t say that. It was Dennis had ... ” He stopped, made a weak gesture, and looked for somewhere to sit down.

  “A gun?” Brycroft asked softly. He glanced at me and smiled with grim satisfaction. “Is that what you were going to say?”

  Tony raised his head. “So maybe Dennis had one. He’d said something ... you know. Shooting his mouth off. Perhaps he did.” He was becoming calmer now. “But I don’t know if Norman did. Or Mike.”

  Bycroft glanced at Sprague. Mr Finch was looking appalled. A lot of heavy action was unrolling before him.

  “All I knew was that Norman wanted to get into the box,” Tony said with careful intensity, finding the silence too destructive.

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “I don’t know. Ask — ”

  “His brother Mike?”

  “He might know.”

  Tony was getting control of himself. The momentary panic was slipping away.

  “The key,” I said. “Ask him about the key.”

  “Keep out of this,” Bycroft snapped.

  “There’s only one gun, Frank.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “You’ll know for certain when the report comes. And if the ballistics people say there’s only one, you’ll need to know how the box was opened. Frank, ask him now.”

  And Bycroft was a good enough policeman to swallow his pride for the sake of evidence. Or he was a bad enough one to find it more important to prove me wrong.

  “Very well, Tony,” he said. “You know the position. The one key had been swallowed, the other was in the hands of the police, and Norman was dead. That’s how it was, the moment Cleave was shot. But the gun got into that box somehow, so it was opened, and that puts you in an awkward position. So tell me how a third key got to be made.”

  He gave me a look under lifted eyebrows. It was just what I’d have asked. I grinned at him. I was fairly confident how Tony would reply.

  “I don’t see how,” said Tony, and I cursed him silently. He was locked in a kind of stubborn persistence.

  “You had the duplicate for a while. Between the time you took it from under the table, and the time you gave it Norman.”

  Tony shook his head. “There wasn’t any time. Norm’d come down with a car — the last job he did. He always got there before Dennis. But I hadn’t been able to get it — kind of scared, you know. Anyway, Norm stood in the office doorway, cussing me, and keeping watch while I got at it. I grabbed the pouch, shook the key out, and gave it to him. Then I stuck the pouch back.”

  Bycroft plucked at his lip. It wasn’t sounding good.

  “Which’d be difficult to prove, now.”

  “It’s what happened.”

  “But it was there before Norman asked you for it. You could’ve had it out — ”

  “What d’you want me to say?” Tony demanded. “The truth, or not?”

  “You could’ve had it out, made an impression ... ”

  “I don’t reckon it’d ever been out,” Tony said. “That pouch, it’d got a kind of felt lining, and it’d been shut so long it’d all stuck together. I had a job opening it up.”

  The idiot, he was ploughing himself right into it. Didn’t he see that? He couldn’t prove one bit of this, and they’d nail him. But Bycroft was turning to face me complacently. It satisfied him — for the moment because he wanted it to.

  “I asked, George, you must admit I asked. Now — d’you agree there couldn’t have been a third key made? There just had to be two guns.”

  “It’s not a debating society,” I said, thoroughly sick of his self-induced theories. “All you’ve got to do is wait
for the lab report.”

  I shrugged as though it didn’t matter, and to deprive him of the pleasure of seeing how much it did.

  “So go away, George, go and do something useful.”

  “I’ll do that,” I promised him. “I’ll go and do my messenger-boy act, and tell the Randalls there’s no progress.”

  He growled, and Sprague chewed violently as I walked past him to the door.

  “I don’t think I’ll tell them why,” I added.

  And after all that, the bloody car wouldn’t start, and when it finally picked up it sounded as though it was flying apart.

  Something else to tell Randall. Cheer him up a bit.

  7

  BUT that night I didn’t tell him anything. There really wasn’t any need for me to say a word, as he could read the news from my face.

  “The wife’s in bed,” he said. “Took a sleeping pill.”

  “Good.”

  You could feel it in the house, a quiet despair, an acceptance of distress. The desperate hope I’d encountered before seemed to have mellowed. It was better that way, perhaps.

  He said: “She can’t carry on much longer.”

  I nodded, and left. Maybe there wasn’t going to be much more waiting, because, as Anne said when I picked her up the next day, “you’ve got an idea, George.”

  It hadn’t been much when I’d mentioned it to her before. I eased the car down the hill, and now it was much more. I told her what I wanted from her. It was a clear morning, the roads only wet.

  “They’ve been searching in the Green Belt area, Anne, because they reckoned she’d been picked up by the same person who killed Annabelle Lester, and she was found there.”

  “I remember. Have you had any sleep?”

  “But I don’t think he’d do that — take Dulcie to the same place.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. You’re too hard, George.”

  “Have to be. Now tell me if I’m wrong. This ring road of yours — it goes past the bus stop where Dulcie was waiting, but does it also go past the spot where Annabelle stood?”

  “You have got an idea. Yes,” she said quickly, observing my expression. “But they’re a mile apart.”

  “Right. Now I want you to show me the way to Wolverhampton.”

  “But you’ve been there.”

  “Show me, Anne, will you!”

  She shrugged. “The fast way or the old way?”

  “I’ve been the fast way.”

  “Then turn right at the island and left onto the A road.”

  Which was what I’d been hoping for. Cleave’s way — the old way.

  “I suppose I ought to apologize,” I said after a moment.

  “I can’t think why.”

  “I cut you off short yesterday. You had me confused, I admit that. I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t want me to be there when you recovered.”

  “I’d have thought it was obvious,” she said briskly. “You just can’t see past that blasted male ego of yours.”

  “And I’m not really sure now.” I was being stubborn, determined to understand.

  “Left here. Left.”

  I slowed for the turn. There’d been plenty of time, and no need for her urgent cry. The engine rattled ominously.

  “It’s nothing to do with ego,” I said, picking the words carefully. I glanced sideways. “But you said you were glad. Glad, Anne, and in such a strange tone. As though I didn’t already know that.”

  She made an impatient sound.

  “As though it was the reason you were glad that I didn’t understand,” I went on.

  “And do you?”

  “I thought I did. Is there another reason?”

  “I’d need to know yours,” she said defensively.

  “Naturally, you wouldn’t want to lay eyes on me again. You’d tried to take your own life. If we’d been five minutes later — ”

  “You George? You found me?”

  “Didn’t you know?”

  And she was silent.

  “This is the A road is it?”

  When she still did not reply I glanced sideways and she had a twisted handkerchief to her mouth.

  “Anne?”

  She shook her head and looked out of the side window, so I just had to manage with signposts, until at last she said quietly:

  “You’re on the right road now.”

  It was such a small voice. I shouldn’t have mentioned her suicide attempt.

  When we were five miles out of town I looked for a lay-by and drew in. “Now,” I said briskly, not looking into her eyes, “we’ll imagine what he did. He’s coming back from Wolverhampton. It’s Friday. Both girls disappeared on Fridays, you know. Show me the nearest route to his scrapyard, Anne.”

  “Whose scrapyard?” she asked, and I realized I’d told her so little.

  But last time I’d spoken to her it had only been a vague idea. Now I was certain. There’d been a pattern, Cleave missing on a Friday, with a car theft the Saturday following. The first Friday — the day Annabelle died — he’d been in Wolverhampton, fixing it up. So obviously, on the day Dulcie had gone missing, he’d been to Wolverhampton again. That was what I had, the knowledge of the direction from which he’d approached the town.

  “Dennis Cleave,” I said.

  She didn’t like the thought, but she gave me directions, and we headed back the way we had come.

  Of course, the snag with my theory was that Annabelle and Dulcie had been picked up at spots a mile apart, whereas Cleave, coming from the same direction, could have been expected to meet the ring road at the same place each time. But possibly not. I slowed. There was a road diversion ahead.

  “This here two years ago?” I asked.

  “It’s only been going for six months.”

  I was getting that metallic taste in my mouth, the angry, bitter taste of approaching success.

  “Then direct me to where we’d have joined the ring road if the diversion hadn’t been here.”

  “I don’t need to,” she said, as though her mouth was dry. “It comes out where Annabelle was standing that night.”

  So there was no point in testing it out. I drove on, and allowed the diversion to take me where it would.

  “That’s the ring road just ahead,” she said suddenly, and I slowed.

  We were coming into the ring road from outside the perimeter. Dulcie, it had been assumed — because of the bus times — would have been waiting for her bus on the inner side of the ring. But as I slowed I saw that Dulcie’s bus stop was right opposite the road junction. I let out a deep breath.

  “Which way would he go from here, do you think?”

  “Left, I’d say.”

  Which was the opposite direction to Dulcie’s supposed bus. The police had assumed wrong when they tackled the Green Belt area, which was way on our right.

  “Look,” I said. “It was getting dark when she went for her bus. She’d be waiting over there. Dennis Cleave comes round this slight bend, his headlights on, and they sweep across that bus stop. He’s going to turn left into the ring road. But he stops. Head out of the window. Dulcie, want a lift? Yes, Uncle Dennis. Pitter patter of feet across the road, into the cab ... ”

  Her hand clamped on my arm. “George ... easy now.”

  I got out my pipe and filled it and felt better.

  “Which way to your place, Anne?”

  “You’re taking me home?” she protested.

  “It’s getting too close.”

  “Ah yes. You’re nervous when you get too close.”

  “This isn’t for you.”

  “You won’t discuss it, won’t get it out into the open.” She was deliberately misunderstanding me, forcing the issue back to personalities.

  “Anne, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I know. The child.” She seemed very tired and sad. “It’s the wrong time to talk about us. It’s always the wrong time. If you must ... turn right, and keep going.”

  I turned ri
ght.

  “You’re so good at that,” she added, and I didn’t reply.

  As we parted she said nothing about meeting again, or about phoning. I felt the emptiness as she walked away. But I had to put it out of my mind and concentrate on the one final requirement that would lead me to Dulcie, the snag being that they’d probably have Tony round at the Station. His father told me they hadn’t taken him in, though, and maybe I’d find him in town.

  “Hangs around cafés,” he said, still looking a bit shaken, and I was lucky because Tony was in the only one I knew.

  I took a coffee over to the corner table, where Tony was sitting over an empty cup, moodily folding the silver paper from a chocolate biscuit.

  “Wanted to ask you something,” I said.

  He raised his eyes. They were angry and tired. “I’ve answered enough questions for one day. Go and talk to somebody else.”

  There was only one thing I wanted to know. It would take a minute. I didn’t ask it.

  “Got yourself into trouble, haven’t you?” I asked.

  “Nobody said so.”

  “But they will, Tony. You admitted too much. Cleave telling you Norman was dead — that gives everybody the impression that you were closer to him than you’ve admitted. So far the inspector’s left you running around loose. I wonder why. Maybe he’s waiting for you to make another mistake.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake.”

  “You might get back in his good books if you helped us a bit.”

  “Who’s us?”

  I shrugged. “Tony, there’s two possibilities in this Cleave business. Either there were two guns, or somebody found a way of getting into that box. You follow me?”

  “Oh sure ... sure.”

  “Inspector Bycroft’s stuck on the two guns idea, but any time now he’s going to get a ballistics report. And there just can’t be two guns. So he’s going to have to come back to you. Are you listening?”

  He was making a butterfly from the silver paper. He picked it up and admired it. “I only told the truth.”

  “Now listen. All you could see was that you were in trouble. You thought you had to prove you couldn’t have made a third key. But that wasn’t necessary. Cleave wouldn’t have swallowed his key if he’d been facing somebody he knew could find the pouch under the table. So you don’t have to prove anything. You may have thought you did, so you made it cast-iron. You didn’t just prove you couldn’t have made a third key, you proved nobody could. And that’s got to be plain ridiculous.”