A Spoonful of Luger

by Ormerod, Roger

  “There’s been other things on my mind,” he reminded me.

  “But not now? You’ve solved it then?”

  “They’re still there, George. You wouldn’t be trying a bit more obstruction, would you? Because if you are, I’ll get you this time. You wouldn’t, perhaps, have been afraid to leave that Victor in the yard!” He raised his eyebrows, trying to stare me down.

  But better people have tried that. I smiled. “The Victor — the Saab. It’s all the same to me.”

  “Perhaps it is. So why don’t you leave this one here for an hour, while you get something to eat.”

  I could have protested, and cemented his suspicions. But I laughed easily.

  “I was leaving it here anyway.”

  “You’re a civilian,” he said severely.

  “Then I’ll take it away.”

  But he was too exhausted to play word games with me. “You’re flippant, George. It’s not in good taste. I haven’t liked your attitude all the way through.”

  “But I found Dulcie for you.”

  He took that as a criticism. “Do you think we sat around?” he demanded. “Let me tell you ... ” He paused, then slapped the top of the crashed car. “There’s a driver in hospital — Sprague was lucky. Last Friday they drove too fast on a false tip-off about Dulcie, and ran this into a tree. Don’t try and tell me we weren’t trying, George.”

  “I didn’t say that. Easy, man, And give Sprague my best wishes. He could’ve taken time off.”

  “A good man,” he growled.

  I left him, still grumbling to himself, and went for my lunch. Sprague was a good man, I decided, persuading myself. Not a complaint, still fiercely on the job. Dedicated — but to what? His own promotion?

  Then I forgot him. Perhaps the Saab hadn’t been stolen. I prayed not, because it would be detectable. The manufacturers put a little metal plate inside the bonnet with chassis and engine numbers stamped on it. The advantage of using a crashed wreck as a substitute is that you have a valid log book and the number plates, and you can switch that little plate to the stolen car. But if you’re really interested you can check the engine number on the metal tab against the one die-stamped on the engine block. And Bycroft was interested enough to have returned to his office to fix that up.

  Maybe the Saab was clean. I’d know after lunch.

  An hour is a long time to use over a meal, even with half a dozen coffees. Bycroft had said an hour, so I didn’t want to appear anxious. Sixty-two minutes by my watch, and I was strolling into the yard, my stomach sloshing away with every step. There was nobody near the car.

  I went in the back way, tried a corridor, and came out at the desk, on the official side of the sliding glass. Sprague was chatting with the woman sergeant.

  “Mind if I take the car?” I asked.

  He turned and considered me, his jaws moving. He seemed pleased.

  “You take it. You just drive away and keep going.”

  “Find anything? Treads worn, brake cable rusty?”

  He looked round at the duty sergeant as though I was insane. “Did we find anything?”

  “Not that I’ve heard,” she said.

  “There you are then,” he told me. “Nothing to stop you leaving.”

  “I’m not in a hurry.”

  “Better be clear of the district by tomorrow,” he advised. “They’re sending up a squad from HQ. And they won’t like you around. Oh no.”

  Ten years earlier I’d have been in that squad. I knew what the attitude would be, and felt a brief, sharp tug of nostalgia.

  “Oh, today should do it,” I said easily.

  But all the same I drove away from there with a feeling of eyes observing me. I drove steadily for ten minutes — oh, any old where — and found a car park. Then I had the bonnet up for myself, and checked.

  The number on the engine block didn’t tally with the one on the metal tab.

  There was a phone box in the corner of the car park. Randall wasn’t at the garage, but I got him at his home.

  “It’s George Coe. Have the police been to see you?”

  He mumbled no.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I was just leaving for the hospital. She’s bad, awful sick, they tell me.”

  “I’m sorry. Look, I’ve got to see you.”

  “Not now. Don’t you understand — ”

  “Perhaps too well. Listen, if they get to you before I do, don’t try to tell lies. And Mr Randall, don’t try to run. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Stupid?” he said. Sense and nonsense were no doubt confused in his mind, along with right and wrong. “What can I do? What is there to do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think of something.” But there wasn’t anything coming. My brain was like cotton wool. There was only the inevitable.

  I drove to the one place I had left to go. Anne was the only one I could confide in. She was the only one I could go to and confess I was beaten.

  She’d encountered it before.

  I drove to the bungalow and parked in front, opened the gate, walked up to the front door. She had it open before I could knock.

  “Anne,” I said, “I don’t know what to do. I think my client’s a murderer.”

  10

  “BUT George, you always know what to do.” She spoke with quiet satisfaction, mentally subtracting half the effect of my statement. I followed her into the hall. It was a neat little bungalow, two bedrooms, a small terrace out back. We weren’t going to sit out there in this weather, but I remembered that terrace.

  “You’ve got a different car,” she said, leading me into the sitting room.

  “Not on purpose.”

  “I’m sure not.”

  I had my hat in my hand, my raincoat still on. She made an apologetic gesture. “I didn’t take your coat.”

  “I didn’t know I was stopping long.”

  “But of course you are, George. If you don’t know what to do, it’s sure to take a while to sort out.”

  I handed over my hat and struggled out of the raincoat, and tried to smile. “I didn’t really come about that,” I said, trying to decide whether that was true.

  “Didn’t you?”

  “It’s just as well, it seems. You’re in your facetious mood, Anne.”

  I’d not intended it as a criticism, but she paused in the doorway, looking back at me, and there was pain in her eyes. She had always enjoyed teasing me; the only thing different was that now a touch of cruelty had crept in. The years can change you, mellow or harden.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “No. It was my fault. Bringing you my troubles.”

  She went back into the hall with my things, and was long enough for me to assume she was dropping the subject. But no. Merely considering it.

  “It’s not the first time,” she said, coming back in and shutting the door firmly behind her.

  “Those troubles weren’t really mine. I didn’t bring them. They were here.”

  “But you made them yours.”

  The french window was facing me, the terrace desolate outside, with grass sprouting between its flags and tufted with snow.

  “Have you had lunch?” she asked.

  “Thank you, yes. I’ve eaten.”

  “But you wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea?”

  “I wouldn’t say no to sitting down quietly and talking,” I said. “Wasn’t it what you wanted? Talk.”

  “Not in your present mood, George.”

  “My mood?”

  I considered it, and while I did she gave me a quick, cool smile, and disappeared into the kitchen. Then I knew what she meant. I’d got to the stage where you duck in your chin, lift your shoulders, and just keep walking forwards, the stupid, stubborn stage, when reason and logic get thrust aside, and you prayed for something to happen. So I’d walked into her house with that expression on my face. Not contrition, no sign of meek expectancy, but simply an indication that she, and what sh
e stood for, were to be disregarded, to make room for the important job I was on.

  I was lucky to have received nothing worse than facetiousness.

  “There,” she said, walking in with the tray. Had she been away that long? “You’re feeling better.”

  I laughed, the first time for days, in a kind of idiot relief. “You’re wonderful, Anne.”

  She sat in front of the tray, keeping her face averted, pouring tea.

  “You haven’t given it time to brew,” I pointed out.

  “Damn you,” she said angrily, still refusing to look up. “Do you have to be so blasted professional?”

  “Habit, I suppose.”

  “Everything, every little gesture, expression, tone of voice, you pick up and analyse.”

  “It’s my training.”

  “Don’t apologize.”

  “I was rather proud of it, actually.”

  She carefully put two precious spoons of sugar in my tea, from memory. I said nothing; I’m on sweeteners now.

  “Do you know, George, you can be positively unpleasant. With a bit of effort you could be quite hateful.”

  “You gave me the impression I’d succeeded.”

  She frowned. “I did?” She was at last looking directly at me.

  “You couldn’t bear to see me when you recovered,” I reminded her.

  “Analyse every little word,” she murmured. “But not always successfully.”

  “Wasn’t that what you meant?”

  I suppose I’d never really understood her. Right from our very first meeting, I had not been certain who was fooling whom. It was rigged, of course, that meeting, an idea of my Super’s. I was angry about it; they needed a younger man, somebody who’d enjoy deceiving a woman. She hadn’t looked right for the part we assumed she was playing — too open, too full of life.

  But people never look what they are, especially when they try. Her husband hadn’t looked like a wealthy leader of a dope gang, but we knew he was. She hadn’t looked like a woman who could be married to such a man, and know what he was. And yet — she must have known, and must have been leading me on.

  “I didn’t mean I had cause to hate you, George,” she said gently, only her careful spacing of the words giving them a special emphasis.

  “I deceived you. That café — do you remember? A chance meeting ... ”

  “Chance!”

  “On the surface. Then another and another. We got on fine, Anne, do you realize that?”

  We had got on like fire racing in front of a strong wind. I hadn’t expected to be able to relax into the work. It was just a job to be done. But Anne had turned out to be pleasant and receptive, an easy companion. The briefing was simply to get to know her well enough to be able to slip her false information. Which didn’t really need all those meetings, those visits to her place — this place — with our intimacy growing all the while.

  “But you’ve hardened now, George,” she said, eyeing me measuringly. “You used to laugh so easily.”

  “It’s a hard life.”

  “Since you retired?”

  “Even before.”

  “They ... they ... ?” She stopped. “Some more tea?”

  “Thank you, yes. You were going to say: they weren’t pleased.”

  “They wouldn’t be — would they?”

  Looking back, I can’t remember exactly when I decided not to go through with it. A day or two before the end, I believe. By that time I had allowed Anne to discover I was a policeman, though without any hint that I was interested in anything remotely touching her. I had told her I was working on a special case, and I’d suggested that drugs were involved. The idea was that she would accept me as a naive and impressionable copper, shooting off his mouth in the throes of infatuation. It was assumed she was systematically extracting information from me and feeding it to her husband, and on that assumption I was intending to give her a false lead. Then, when he acted on it, we’d have him.

  But somewhere along the line I became uncertain. If her innocence was an act, it was a damn sight better one than mine. I began to hate myself for deceiving her. But there was nothing to prevent it going ahead as planned, and innocent or not she’d probably still pass him the information we needed him to receive, if only in casual conversation. Then we’d have him.

  But then — what of Anne?

  I suddenly banged the cup and saucer down, the memory haunting me. “I was a fool,” I said sharply. “I blame myself. Nobody else. I was old enough to know better. If I’d been a youngster there might have been some excuse. But it’d gone too far, Anne. It had run away with me. Right out of control. All I knew was that I couldn’t go on with it. Not and remember seeing you, all the time, in my mind. The way you smiled ... ”

  “George!” she broke in. “You don’t have to go on.”

  “Don’t I?” I turned and looked at her, and realized that I’d got to my feet. “It’s not the same smile. There’s something hard in it. And your attitude — it’s flippant and ... and shallow ... ”

  “How dare you!”

  “I don’t like the way you are.”

  “How dare you come into my home ... I was trying to be friendly and put it all behind us ... and you deliberately insult me.”

  “Perhaps I’m seeing only what I want to see,” I said apologetically.

  There was blazing anger in her eyes, but as I watched her she glanced away, glanced back, then down at her hands.

  “I try,” she whispered. “I’ve been trying so hard. But I didn’t know how to approach you, what to say, how to say it. I’ve felt ... ” She looked up, and for one moment recaptured the anger. “ ... damn you, George, I feel as though you’re watching me, every second, considering, weighing me up. How can I be natural?”

  “But what is natural, Anne?”

  She ignored that. “What did you mean — what you want to see?”

  What I had wanted to see was the flaw in her character, the duplicity. I’d been hoping that experience would help me to recognize it now, behind its facade, so that finally I could dismiss that old and painful episode as a simple error of judgment. It was what I was hoping to find, in order finally to dismiss the self-disgust that had been haunting me for ten years.

  “Somebody who could be a dope peddlar’s wife, know it, and still be able to act pleasant and relaxed ... and human.”

  She was searching my face, not believing what she heard.

  “Did you believe that at the time?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  How could you believe that of somebody you were madly in love with? I’d come to that, let it run on and on, until I couldn’t control it. Then the time had come when the trap was to be sprung. I was instructed to slip her the information.

  I’d pounded the pavement again that night, for hours, before I could face her. But she’d welcomed me so eagerly and openly that I’d been unable to go through with it, knowing that I’d never see her again, and that her memory of me would be so harsh.

  So I had deliberately told her what had been going on, what her husband was — just as I would if I assumed she wouldn’t know — where he was at that exact moment, and how we’d meant to trap him. I was throwing everything into that moment, on the assumption that she would be revolted, and would perhaps go on with the trap.

  “You must have thought something,” she said desperately. “When you told me.”

  “I thought you knew nothing.”

  “And later?”

  “The moment you closed the door behind me you were on the phone,” I said, trying to keep my voice normal. “Warning him.”

  “I didn’t think that mattered.”

  “Not matter?” Was she mad?

  “He was my husband.” She waved her arms in a gesture of despair. “There wasn’t time to consider my emotions.”

  “And then,” I cried — shouted, I think, “when he’d got clear, when you knew there was only you left ... ” I made an effort to m
oderate my voice. “We came back here, after we knew he’d slipped us. The place was dark and locked up. I thought at first you’d had your own escape route laid on, but that really would have proved it.”

  “You were still uncertain?”

  “I wanted you to be here. That’s all. If you’d gone, that’d be the end of any doubt ... But somehow I couldn’t believe that you’d gone. The super wanted to leave, but I insisted — me, insisting to a super! God, I was wild that night — insisted on breaking in. And we found you.”

  “Yes, you said.”

  I couldn’t go on for a moment. There were two things I still couldn’t face, not after all my years of toughening, and those were crimes against children and suicides. I’d had both in this town, and my guts were aching with it all. The memory came surging back, the moment we’d walked into the bedroom and found Anne. She was still legally living, but she’d gone away from me, somewhere I couldn’t reach. That’s the thing with suicide, you can’t reach them. Whatever it is — the pain, the distress — it’s beyond anyone’s reach but their own.

  I’d driven her into taking her escape route.

  “Why, Anne, why? You didn’t have to do that. You could have found another way out.”

  And she burst into tears. That was all I needed. Tears from a woman mean something special to a copper, that all reserves are exhausted — like Tony’s resource to truth. But Anne’s tears were personal. Her distress was something I couldn’t reach.

  I sat down opposite her and tried to speak gently.

  “I knew I’d deceived you, and that I’d driven you to ... that. Everything else was background, all the departmental faff that went on. They disciplined me, you know, almost threw me out.” She didn’t look up, but I felt she was listening. The only words I could find seemed hopelessly inadequate. “But none of that mattered. I went down a notch, back to a constable on the cars. But it didn’t matter ... ”

  She lifted her head. “That’d be later — much later?”

  I shrugged. “I couldn’t just forget it. Oh, I tried. You can’t know how I tried. I waited around the town until I knew you were safe ... ”

  “You said.”

  “A week, that was. Probably the worst week in my life, with the super phoning — I was at the Bedford that time, too — and ordering me to report for duty. But that was impossible. As far as I was concerned, they could go to hell. And of course, I couldn’t face you. I went back to HQ, and it didn’t seem to matter what they did with me.”