A Spoonful of Luger Page 5

  “To tell him Dennis is dead.”

  The girl suddenly made a snarling sound of impatience, turned away angrily, and moved down the hall. Mike was thinking about it. He moved his shoulders, and one huge hand became a bigger fist.

  “Dennis who?”

  “You Norman’s brother?”

  “Yes. Dennis who?”

  “I wanted to tell Norman about it.”

  The aggression had moderated from his voice. I’d made him at least curious. “He ain’t here.”

  “Then perhaps I’d better tell his brother,” I suggested. “You can pass it on when you see him.”

  He hesitated some more, and finally backed off. “You better come in.” Then, in a howl of distress: “And wipe yer bloody feet.”

  I looked down. His own feet were bare, which must have been uncomfortable on the naked red quarries. I wiped and entered.

  They lived in the back. Somebody had knocked down a wall to make the old sitting room and scullery into one large dining-kitchen. There was a modern wide window in the rear wall, providing a picture view of the canal. The furnishings were worn shiny and black, and the surfaces were collapsing. Mike threw himself onto a settee.

  “Talk,” he said.

  I glanced at the young woman. She was hacking a potato to pieces. “My wife,” he said. “Rose.”

  Breakfast was still on the table. A newspaper was open at a report on the death of Dennis Cleave. There was a sideboard against a back wall with a modern hi-fi spread on it, the speakers each side of the ancient black fireplace, and a coloured tele in the corner. Maybe they saved on rent. A delicate clock on the mantel rotated its four balls under a dome of glass. There were two pictures of veteran cars on the wall.

  “Perhaps he knows that Dennis is dead,” I said. “In which case I’ve wasted my time.”

  “Sure you ain’t a copper?”

  “Why? Are you expecting one?” He blinked. “Though I suppose you would be. I mean, a man gets himself shot ... it’s only reasonable the police’d be looking up his friends.”

  “You keep talkin’ about friends,” he complained. “Rose, what’s he on about?”

  “A girl died,” I said, “two years ago. Annabelle Lester. A long way from here. Your brother Norman and this Dennis Cleave were together, and gave each other alibis ... ”

  “Now look here — ”

  “You keep your trap shut,” Rose shrieked at him. “Don’tcha see, he’s connin’ you!”

  Mike looked hurt. “He’s suggesting somethin’.”

  I smiled at such an idea. “I’m not suggesting a thing. It merely occurred to me that Cleave gave your brother an alibi last time, and your brother’s missing now, and you seem to be expecting the police ... ” I shrugged. He was coming slowly to his feet, measuring me. “And there’s another little girl gone missing ... ”

  I swayed sideways. Rose screamed, and Mike’s fist moved the hair sticking out of my right ear. I caught his wrist. I had absolutely no faith in what I was suggesting, but I needed his anger.

  He twisted free, crouched, glared, and Rose screamed for him to push my face in.

  “And why here?” I asked.

  “What?” It held him.

  “What was Cleave doing here? It’s thirty miles from his place.”

  That I was obviously mad restrained him, an instinct to preserve the weak, no doubt. He shrugged, turned away, and thrust three fingers of each hand into the pockets of his jeans.

  “People meet. It’s gotta be somewhere.” He whirled on Rose, venting his anger. “And finish them potatoes!”

  I thought the knife was going into his guts, but she sneered and went back to the sink. He crashed down again onto the settee.

  “Norm had wrecked a car,” he conceded.

  “Then why didn’t he sell it to a local scrapyard? Why did Cleave come all this way for it? You mean they weren’t strangers?”

  “The best price,” he grumbled. “You phone around.”

  “Long distance? A wrecked car?”

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “Of course you don’t. But you are. That’s not good. Where is he now, then? Crashing another car?”

  I thought I’d gone too far, and it was too early for that. But he relaxed.

  “I dunno.” And he didn’t. Mike was worried.

  “He’s your brother. He lives here.”

  “He comes and goes.”

  “When did he last go?”

  “Over a week. A week ago last Saturday.”

  Rose said: “Shut your stupid gob.”

  I reached over for the newspaper. It was the same one as I took, so I knew where to find it, only a small paragraph but still important enough to reach the dailies. I slapped the paper down under his nose.

  “That Saturday? The day after Dulcie Randall went missing?”

  His head remained bending over it, but I knew he was not reading, and didn’t need to. I waited, watching the deltoids harden. Then he came up from that settee as though the broken springs propelled him, and there was nothing scientific about his approach. He went for my eyes with one hand, my guts with his other fist, and lower down with his knee. All that saved me was his ambition; he’d extended too much. I stamped hard on his other foot.

  I don’t believe in violence. As far as I’m concerned, an eye for an eye is a musty creed from some pagan philosophy. But when you’re challenged in an alien tongue you respond in the same language, or you’re apt to be shot down. I therefore answered in the only language he knew. While he was still howling I chopped in with a left and a right, to the twisted mouth and the distorted ear. He hung on, that wrecked face only inches from mine. It was unpleasant. Then Rose was scrambling over my back, and I felt the searing heat as her knife ran along my ribs. That sort of thing is annoying. I freed an elbow and jabbed backwards. Not gentlemanly, I suppose. But the knife went away. I was then able to give full attention to Mike, who was trying to eat my nose. His knee was going up and down like a roadmender’s drill, so I hooked an arm under it and heaved. He went over the settee. I was on top of him before he stopped rolling, and the breath went out of him. One knee pinned his sternum to the carpet, one hand clipped at his throat, one fist slammed his head back onto the quarries. He said something disagreeable. I hit him in the mouth.

  Then I stood up and apologized, but he didn’t hear me. Rose was vomiting all over the coloured tele, hanging on as though I might be going to repossess it. I had a look. There was nothing worse than a fine cut along my ribs, so I apologized to her too.

  By the time Mike was sitting up I was going through drawers. He groaned.

  “What yer after?”

  “Money,” I told him. “The shirt’s ruined, a hole in the jacket, a slit in the mac. Money mate.”

  “Stupid cow,” said Mike and Rose stopped retching long enough to tell him about his masculinity.

  There was plenty of money in one of the drawers, lying around loose.

  “Twenty,” I said. “That should cover it. Where’d he go?”

  “For Chrissake ... ”

  “Where did Norman go, a week last Saturday?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Took his car, did he?”

  “He ain’t got a car.”

  “Doesn’t have a car — only crashes ‘em. Right, so he went some way or other. Where to?”

  He looked at me. “Nottingham,” he muttered.

  “Fine. We progress.” I made a mental note to check whether Dennis Cleave had been missing that same Saturday. Had he, too, gone to Nottingham?

  I yanked open another drawer of the sideboard. It was stiff and came out with a tinkling sound. I looked inside. There were seven bunches of keys, on rings about three inches across. Each ring held from twenty to fifty keys.

  “Well now ... ” I lifted one ring out on a finger. “House keys?”

  “We move a lot.”

  “Or ignition keys?”

  “Keep your hands off them,” he said in agony,
and he got to his feet. He still looked dangerous. A lot of work had gone into that collection. I did not keep my hands off them, but scooped out all seven rings. As I piled them in they made my raincoat heavy. Mike moved between me and the door. I laughed. My ribs were sore but my heart was high.

  “I want them keys.”

  “I’ll send you a receipt.”

  I walked at him and he made a feeble gesture. I trod on his toe. I was getting good at that. He was still telling me things when I went out of the front door.

  I was surprised to find that I had enjoyed myself. The car tried to dig its rear wheels into the mud, but I was patient with it and eased it back onto the road. Then I went for a coffee and a sausage roll, and tackled the motorway again. It didn’t seem so bad this time, though the engine didn’t like it.

  I bounded up the Station stairs, feeling good. It was a long time since I’d had to deal with anybody like Mike, and it was gratifying to find that I still could — could even bound up stairs. But I had more than that. I had something I could show Bycroft.

  “Oh lovely,” he decided, almost snarling. “Trust you to ball things up.”

  5

  I HAD bounced the keys on his desk, and waited for his delight, like a spaniel with his tongue flapping. He was alone and surrounded by paper. But there was no surge of pleasure. He just stared at them.

  “Keys,” I said. “Car keys.”

  “So I see.”

  “I got ‘em at Norman Lyle’s place. He and his brother Mike, they’ve obviously been working a stolen car racket.” I felt I was beating the words against his lack of enthusiasm.

  “I gathered that. So now you’ve given them time to make a break for it. That was very clever of you, George.”

  “Frank, think. It links up. Down at Cleave’s yard there was a paint spraying plant. Now what’d a car breaker want with that? And remember the tape Tony used to stick that pouch under the table? It was masking tape, the stuff they use when they’re spraying cars.”

  He made rumbling noises, then slammed his fist onto the desk. “I’ll kill him!”

  “Who?”

  “That Tony Finch. You have to drag every detail out of him with pincers ... ”

  “Maybe he didn’t know.”

  “Of course he knew. You heard him: he went down there to see if anything had come in. Oh, I’m sure he did. He meant come in for spraying. That was his job. By heaven — ”

  “Never mind that for now. Don’t you see, Frank, it means that Mike or Norman pinched them, and Cleave had them re-sprayed. And of course, Cleave supplied the log books. More than likely Cleave met one of them with the pick-up and took him to some selected town. It was Nottingham last Saturday, a week back.”

  And still Bycroft wasn’t pleased. “Oh thank you, thank you,” he said sarcastically.

  But he obviously didn’t get the important point. “And if Cleave knew Norman, then it makes nonsense of his alibi for Annabelle Lester’s killing.”

  “You damn fool,” he shouted. “How d’you think that helps? What d’you think we’ve been looking for — a live Dulcie Randall? You know we’re not. And now you come along and link Cleave in with Annabelle, and by inference with Dulcie. I’m not mentally retarded, George. Where d’you think we’ve been searching for Dulcie? We’re looking in the place Annabelle was found. I was doing all right without your help — ”

  “So you’d assume he’d dump Dulcie in the same spot? Never, Frank.”

  “Leave me to make the decisions, and get out of here.”

  “And Norman’s been missing for a week,” I put in mildly, just trying to rescue something.

  “You had the nerve to suggest I was neglecting the Dulcie search! And what’ve you been doing?” he demanded. “Up to your old tricks, that’s what, pushing around the toughies, about all you’re good for.”

  “The log books,” I said, pushing them under his nose.

  “I know, I know. Cleave and Norman were out to steal a car to fit one of those two log books. That was the Saturday before last. And Norman’s missing, so something happened ... I know what to do, thank you. Just get from underfoot.”

  He snapped a switch on his intercom, said, “get Sprague,” then flicked some more switches, and I felt the building quiver with the activity he put into motion.

  It took ten minutes of routine enquiry, then they’d got it. A Rover 3500 had been stolen in Nottingham the Saturday before last, and not reported found. It hadn’t arrived at the scrapyard, according to Tony Finch, but there was a burnt-out wreck reported down a bank between Nottingham and here. It was a Rover 3500. Body of driver unidentified. And that, too, had happened on the Saturday before last.

  It neatly covered one of the two log books in the box.

  Bycroft and Sprague grabbed their coats and hats, and Bycroft suddenly realized I was still there.

  “So now we go chasing a car-theft racket,” he said bitterly. “Oh lovely! Trust you to ball things up.”

  Sprague was nodding, nodding. He was enjoying this bit.

  I had to get out of Bycroft’s office while he locked up, had to follow them down the stairs because there was nothing to hang around for. I followed them into the yard and watched them climb into Bycroft’s car. I was standing next to a wrecked police car, its front crushed in as far back as the screen. It only added to my depression; I felt as crushed as the car. I decided I ought to drive after them, but there didn’t seem much point.

  I opened the Victor’s door, and Anne said, “I remembered the car, George.”

  I just didn’t have time to adjust. She was sitting in the passenger’s seat. I slid in beside her and thought, hell, there’s no way out.

  “Recognised it here?” This was the Station yard — private, really.

  She gave a mischievous smile that didn’t seem real. “I was waiting at the corner, guessing you’d be coming here.”

  “It’s cold work, observation.”

  “I hadn’t been there long when you drove in.”

  “Was there something — ”

  I had been going to suggest something she’d thought about Dulcie, but she cut in quickly.

  “Do I have to have a reason?”

  But Bycroft’s attitude was still weighing heavily on me. I hadn’t the energy to dissimulate. “I’d have thought so. Something good, to want to see me.”

  “Now why should you say that?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Anne, use your common sense.”

  “If you’re trying to insult me ... ”

  “No. No, I’m sorry.”

  And now all I wanted was to get away, but what was there for Randall if I chased after Bycroft? He wanted Dulcie. I wasn’t finding her. I was just getting myself diverted, and in all directions.

  “I can see I caught you at the wrong moment,” she said quietly. “I’ll go.”

  “Things are going wrong, Anne, that’s all. Not your fault.”

  “Perhaps it is. You came back, and I had the wild idea that maybe I could be part of the reason ... ”

  “I didn’t want to come back, and that’s the truth. I hate this town, and all it means.”

  “That’s obvious.” She paused, and I glanced at her. She was watching me with a frown. “You were in such a hurry to get away last time.”

  “Do you think I could have stayed?” I burst out. “Do you really imagine I could have borne to be around when you opened your eyes — and looked at me?”

  “It was stupid of me to wait for you here,” she decided.

  I knew, miserably, what she meant. You intrude into another facet of a person’s life, and discover yourself to be of little importance, shut out. She tossed her head, and confirmed my interpretation.

  “Whatever’s been going on inside there?” she asked.

  But I wasn’t going to admit the assault on my ego. “It was my fault, in the first place, driving up there to look at the bungalow.”

  “George,” she said quietly, “you mustn’t blame yourself that you weren’
t there when I did open my eyes. If you want to know, I was glad you weren’t. Do you understand, George, glad!”

  And because I did not, because I was confused and needed time, I burst out:

  “You can help me, Anne.” I looked away. “If you will.”

  “I said I would. You mean now?”

  “Not now. There’s somewhere I’ve got to go, right now. But tomorrow — perhaps? There’s just a thought I’ve had. In the morning?”

  She put her hand on my arm. “You pick me up. Any time.”

  Then she got out of the car. She paused with the door open, and looked back.

  “But you did wait until you were sure my eyes would open.”

  She walked away.

  A small portion of it all had been laid out between us and inspected, and it hadn’t been as bad as I’d feared. Something had pleased her. But why had she been glad I hadn’t waited at the bedside?

  I knew what I’d got to do, and now I could face it. Bycroft wouldn’t be pleased to see me. I grinned and accelerated out of the yard.

  There had been enough information flung around for me to be sure of the locations. With a map on the seat I drove as fast as possible, though the sleet was beginning to settle, and I could feel the tyres trying to break away on corners.

  But this cold spell was recent. A week ago there’d been no ice on the roads to account for the Rover 3500’s crash. I found it, marked by a row of warning cones along the gap in the fence. The bank fell away, and down below I could just see the wreck, though the light was going. There wasn’t any point in climbing down, with all the lumbersome effort of struggling up again. Any evidence would have been taken away, and its original colour was irrelevant, even if there’d been any paint left. It would have finished up as primrose, anyway.

  I drove on. The crash was in the county area, so they’d have taken the body to the county morgue. I knew where that was, and no longer hurried. There’d be formalities to delay Bycroft, and, judging by the cars when I got there, quite a few introductions to be got through. Three police cars were parked in the yard and uniformed men seemed to be lounging everywhere, flapping their hands and breathing mistily. I nodded to right and left. “Evening.” Nobody questioned me, so that I got into the scene just as things were warming up.