Gently Where the Roads Go by Alan Hunter

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    ‘What’s this for?’ Gently asked.
    Madsen’s head began to shake. ‘I do not know . . . is Tim’s, perhaps. I don’ know nothing about that.’
    ‘You’re a mechanic – and don’t know?’
    ‘Yes – perhaps to stop tools from rusting.’
    ‘Tools already covered in grease?’
    ‘That is what I think.’ Madsen’s flush had left him.
    ‘It’s used for tools all right,’ Gently said.
    ‘Yes, as I say. Is used for tools.’
    ‘But the tools are guns,’ Gently said.
    Madsen’s hands moved. He didn’t speak.
    ‘Well?’ Gently said.
    Madsen swayed. ‘I tell you . . . is something of Tim’s,’ he said.
    ‘Tim had a gun?’
    ‘I . . . do not know.’
    ‘He was certainly killed with one,’ Gently said.
    ‘I do not know about a gun.’
    ‘Nor about this bottle?’
    Madsen’s head shook.
    ‘Never saw it there – or Tim using it?’
    Madsen kept on shaking his head.
    ‘You’re very unobservant,’ Gently said. ‘I saw the bottle soon after I came in here.’
    ‘I tell you I know nothing about it,’ Madsen said. ‘I don’ never have a gun. You have searched. There is not one.’
    ‘We haven’t dragged the river yet,’ Gently said. ‘We may get round to it if people keep lying.’
    ‘It is right, I never have one,’ Madsen said.
    Gently stared at Madsen. Felling sucked in breath.

CHAPTER FOUR
    S TILL IN THE garage.
    Madsen had gone, stumbling over the threshold in his eagerness. Gently stood staring at the greasy bottle. Felling, scowling, eased from foot to foot. They could hear Madsen cross the yard and go up his stairs: the slam of his door. Then only the noises of the sparrows scratching down through the tight air.
    Felling said: ‘It won’t have prints, sir – too much oil on it to take them.’
    Gently nodded. He held up the bottle between himself and the light. He unscrewed the cap, sniffed, screwed the cap back on. Felling watched. He kept scowling. There was sweat on both their foreheads.
    ‘So,’ Gently said, ‘what do you make of it, Felling?’
    Felling shifted, inclined his head. ‘I think they were running a racket sir, between them. And that’s why Madsen burned the papers.’
    ‘You saw something suspicious when you looked at them?’
    ‘. . . No, sir. I can’t say that I did. Only I didn’t look at them very carefully, I didn’t know that it mattered, then.’
    ‘What sort of a racket?’ Gently asked.
    Felling gave his shoulder a twist. ‘Pinching stuff, sir, it could be. Loading a bit more than the docs show, then flogging it off before making delivery.’
    Gently said, ‘It could have been that.’
    ‘That’s one of the rackets,’ Felling said. ‘Or they might have been knocking off other trucks, sir. There’s no saying what they were up to.’
    ‘It could have been that too,’ Gently said. ‘But where does this mysterious visitor fit into it?’
    ‘Maybe they’re two separate things, sir.’
    Gently said, ‘Yes. Maybe.’
    He said: ‘Teodowicz’s life would seem to have been a busy one, what with running rackets and being an agent. He couldn’t have had a lot of time left over. Not for driving loads, things like that.’
    Felling grinned. ‘I see your point, sir. I was just trying to explain Madsen’s behaviour.’
    ‘Yes,’ Gently said, ‘it interests me too.’
    ‘There could’ve been something that needed covering up, sir’.
    Gently kept on looking at the bottle. His fingers were covered with oil from it. The creases of his face had no expression. He looked at the bottle, turning it slowly.
    Felling said: ‘I still think that Kasimir bloke is the only answer to the shooting, sir. I don’t reckon Teodowicz was a spy or anything, but there’s nobody else in the picture.’
    Gently held up the bottle. ‘Have you an explanation for this?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh, I don’t know sir,’ Felling said. ‘Perhaps it belonged to Teodowicz, like Madsen