Read Online A Spoonful of Luger by Roger Ormerod - Free Book Online

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.
    Rose was sitting on a bench in the waiting room. That meant Mike had been picked up and brought from Wolverhampton. Either he’d assumed I was working completely on my own, or he’d been too worried about his brother to make a break for it. Rose gave me a scowl. I bowed slightly and went in through the swing doors.
    They try to eliminate shadows, but the effect is chill and repellent. The remains were spread under a sheet on a slab, and a constable was holding tightly to Mike’s arm, more to support than restrain him. Mike had come prepared to deny everything, whatever might be thrown at him, but this part of the proceedings was shaking him. A body found in a burnt-out car is not pleasant to look at.
    They drew back the covers, and he gave a strangled little cough, and turned away. He was pale, and looked nowhere as big as he’d done in that hallway.
    “How the hell ... ”
    “Any marks we can look for?” asked the pathologist.
    Mike shook his head and looked round for a chair.
    “Any operations he’d had?”
    Mike said nothing.
    “Come on, man,” Bycroft said sharply.
    “Appendix,” Mike said savagely. “He’d had ‘em out.”
    “One,” said the pathologist. He looked at Bycroft. “This one had had his out.”
    “Anything else?” Bycroft demanded. “Anything in his pockets?” Then, a sharp bark. “Lyle!”
    “A lighter. A bleedin’ Dunhill he’d got.”
    The pathologist nodded. A part-melted gold lighter had indeed been found.
    That seemed to settle it. The dead man was Norman Lyle. We all drifted back into the waiting room, and I realized that the tall, distinguished man leading the way solemnly was probably the county super, or some such rank.
    “Then you’ve got all you need,” he said, but Bycroft wasn’t listening.
    Rose was on her feet, and Mike croaked: “It’s him, Rose.” But she just stood and stared in disbelief.
    “Now,” said Bycroft, “let’s hear about it. He’d stolen that car, hadn’t he, Lyle?” He wasn’t going to waste a second.
    “How the hell would I know?”
    “Because there were bunches of car keys at your house, and Norman lived with you.”
    Mike shook his head.
    “Never mind,” Bycroft said. “Plenty of time. We’ll go into it back at the station. You’ll tell us the truth before the night’s out.”
    “You can’t say I had anythin’ to do with it,” Mike shouted, and Rose joined him. “He ain’t done nothin’.”
    “We’ll see,” Bycroft said.
    “Keys?” said their super, or whatever he was. “That’s interesting. We found this little lot dangling from the ignition switch.” And he produced another ring similar to