Free A Spoonful of Luger by Roger Ormerod

first.
    “You expecting them to be?” I asked.
    “That young fool!”
    “So you know what he’s been doing?”
    “I don’t know even now. Can’t get a word out of him. Listen ... you come and have a try.”
    “I ought to explain, I’m a private investigator, employed by somebody else.”
    “But you can help me. You’d know the questions to ask.”
    I knew the ones I’d like answers to. “Some.”
    He slapped a fist into his other palm. “Well then — you ask ’em, and if he don’t answer I’ll belt him till he does.”
    “I hope that won’t be necessary.”
    “You don’t know him.”
    But I was beginning to. “Perhaps you should’ve belted him before.”
    He shrugged. “There was nothing I could pin down. But I just felt ... You know the impressions you get. Just felt there was something not quite right. Else why’d he hang on to that rotten job for eighteen months — sure to be — all this time? I could have started him up in a man’s job. Three A levels and he packed it all in.”
    “What sort of man’s job, Mr Finch?”
    “Steel erector. That’s what I do.”
    “Chilly work, this weather.”
    “Never affected me.” It wouldn’t dare. “Come and speak to him. He’s in here. You ask him, and — ”
    “I know. You’ll belt him.”
    He opened the door. It was what we’d call a large room nowadays, plenty of space to move between the scattered bits of unmatched furniture. Tony was standing in the centre of the deep bay window, in slacks and an undervest, his back to me and contemplating my car.
    “This gentleman’s come to see you,” his father said.
    Tony turned. There was a look of contemptuous defiance on his face. “I don’t have to talk to you. You ain’t from the police.”
    “You don’t do much talking to them, either.”
    “That’s my business.”
    “From what I hear, they had you in most of the night, and there was not one mention from you of the stolen car racket.”
    “What car ... ”
    “Oh come on, come on. There’s going to be a police car here any minute. They’ll be asking you a lot of questions, so you might as well be prepared.”
    “I don’t have to talk to you,” he said belligerently.
    “I’m not paid by you, Tony. I’ve got another client.” I wished he’d move from the window, where his face was in shadow. “But I’m giving you some advice, free and for nothing.”
    He shrugged and turned his back.
    “For instance,” I said, “it’s no good denying you were working with Cleave and the Lyles, stealing cars and respraying them. Cleave kept back the log books for recent cars, crash jobs, then the Lyles pinched cars to fit the log books. It was a smart game, because then they could sell ’em quite openly.”
    He mumbled something.
    “What’s that?” I asked.
    He shouted: “I don’t know a bloody thing about it.”
    “Just you tell him the truth, son,” said his father mildly. I couldn’t see any belting coming off.
    “The spray-paint,” I reminded Tony. “And you knew where to find the masking tape to fix Cleave’s pouch. You can’t argue round it.”
    He said nothing, seemed poised, wondering how long he could stall. “And the inspector’s going to ask you how Norman Lyle came to be carrying Cleave’s duplicate key.”
    “Well all right, what does it matter? I guessed about the cars. Well ... I’d guess, wouldn’t I?”
    “You’d guess, Tony,” I agreed solemnly. “You’re a bright lad. Three A levels. You’d see them come in, nothing the matter with them except they needed respraying into the colour to match the log books. Oh, you’d guess.”
    “But I wasn’t in with ’em. I never got nothing extra, only a bit of a bonus now and then.”
    “Did they always come in Saturdays?” I asked, getting down to it.
    “Yeah — sure.” He looked at me sharply. “You know that?”
    “Guessed. You said you went along on Saturday evenings, to see if anything had turned up.”
    “Not every Saturday.”
    “No?