by Joyce Porter
‘What for?’
‘It might be useful to see if any of them have ever been in trouble with the police before, sir.’
‘Can’t think why.’
Neither, when it came down to it, could MacGregor. ‘Do you think I ought not to bother, sir?’
Dover shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t object to work in general, of course, only to work in relation to himself. ‘Who deduced Knapper had no previous?’ he asked fretfully. It distressed him to be unable to knit up his ravell’d sleeve of care.
‘Well, we did, sir.’
‘Not me, mate!’
‘There’d been no attempt to destroy Knapper’s fingerprints, sir. Only his face.’
‘So?’
MacGregor tried to remind himself that not everbody was blessed with sharp wits and a logical mind. Or even a half-way efficient memory. ‘Osmond told us, sir, that whoever got the job of disposing of Knappers body was supposed to make sure he was unrecognisable as well. That’s why the head and face were soaked in petrol and burned.’
‘What’s that got to do with bloody fingerprints?’ demanded Dover. ‘’Strewth, you don’t half enjoy stringing things out.’
Fortunately MacGregor was the stuff that martyrs are made of. ‘No attempt was made to destroy Knapper’s fingerprints,
sir.’
‘You can’t destroy fingerprints by burning the skin off,’ said Dover, who got most of his knowledge of forensic medicine off the telly. The whorl things go right down to the bone or something.’
‘The fingers could have been chopped off easily enough, sir, and disposed of separately from the rest of the body, if there’d been any danger of us tracing Knapper by means of his fingerprints.’
Dover blinked uncertainly. ‘Didn’t we trace him through his fingerprints?’
MacGregor shook his head. ‘No, sir. Don’t you remember? We traced Knapper primarily through the blue bead he managed to swallow and the meal of venison he ate. We only confirmed Knapper’s identity by comparing the fingerprints on the corpse with those we found in Knapper’s house – the ones his wife had missed.’
Dover was frowning. ‘I don’t remember that.’
MacGregor sighed. ‘Well, actually, sir, by the time we got the answer, we already knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the victim was Knapper so I didn’t bother troubling you about it.’
‘Oh.’ For a second Dover wondered if he’d got the energy to have a row about being kept in the picture but, before he’d decided, his mind had flitted off onto something else. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Sir?’
Dover opened both his eyes – always a sure sign that he was wide awake – and sat up a bit straighter. ‘The murderer doesn’t bother destroying Knapper’s fingerprints because he knows they’ll be no help in tracing who Knapper is, right?’
MacGregor weighed his answer carefully. ‘I think so, sir.’
‘But how did he know?’
‘Sir?’
‘Use your bloody brains, MacGregor! Look, everybody says that that bunch of nutters who ran Knapper’s trial at the Holiday Ranch were all total strangers to each other. Agreed? So – how did the joker who killed Knapper know that Knapper hadn’t got a police record and that his bloody fingerprints weren’t on our files?’
MacGregor just wasn’t quick enough.
Dover answered his own question. ‘The way I see it, there’s only one chappie who could have known for bloody sure that Knapper’s fingerprints wouldn’t help trace him. One chappie who’s already admitted that he got hold of the list of people who were going to be at Bowerville and ran a routine check on them. In fact, when you come right down to it, there’s only one bloody joker in that bunch who could have had access to the Yard’s criminal records in any case.’
‘Osmond,’ said MacGregor, hardly able to believe what he was saying.
‘Too bloody right!’ said Dover. ‘Nobody else could have checked that Knapper’s fingerprints weren’t on file.’
‘And nobody else would have been interested in checking, sir,’ said MacGregor, getting quite excited as a few pieces of the puzzle began dropping into place. ‘Not at that stage. None of them had any idea why they were being summoned to the Holiday Ranch until they got there. They couldn’t possibly have known about having to commit a murder and get rid of the body. Osmond didn’t know, either, but he was just doing his job as a copper. He probably runs a check on every Steel Band name he gets hold of as a matter of pure routine. So, when the time came, Osmond knew he didn’t have to bother chopping Knapper’s hands off or anything. He knew that, if the body was found, nobody could identify it from the fingerprints. Oh, just a minute, sir!’ MacGregor’s face fell.
‘Pettitt must have known that there was going to be a trial and execution – and that it was important that Knapper’s body shouldn’t be identified.’
‘But Pettitt couldn’t possibly have run a check on Knapper through our files,’ insisted Dover. ‘Besides, he’s the one who dealt out the cards, isn’t he? Surely to God he wasn’t daft enough to deal himself a card that would put his head on the chopper? Then there’s the petrol!’
‘The petrol, sir?’ MacGregor was finding it difficult to keep up. He wasn’t used to so much heady animation from Dover.
‘The lighter fuel stuff that was poured over Knapper’s head and set alight!’ yelped Dover, going beserk as he realised he’d solved a case at last. ‘Osmond is the only one who smokes! None of the others do.’
‘And owns a cigarette lighter that run on petrol!’
‘With a flame like a bloody bonfire!’ howled Dover. ‘And you heard him! He said it used gallons of fuel. I’ll lay you a thousand to one he had one of those little cans of petrol stuff with him at Bowerville. It stands to reason. Anybody who smokes as heavily as he does wouldn’t risk their lighter running dry on them.’
MacGregor drew a deep, deep breath. ‘I think we may possibly be onto something here, sir.’
‘I know we bloody well are, laddie! And I’ll tell you something else. I’ll bet you Osmond’s got some connection with Muncaster somewhere. Prior knowledge. That’s why he picked the place. You’d better get cracking on that and find out.’
‘What are you going to do, sir?’
MacGregor’s question was prompted by the unlovely spectacle of Dover trying to hoist his unwieldy bulk into the vertical plane. One of the troubles with their tiny office was that, when one person changed his position, everybody else had to as well. MacGregor found himself being forced into the frenetic quadrille necessary if Dover was to reach the door without shoving the corner of his desk through the window.
‘Going to see old Punchard, of course!’ explained Dover, puffing hard.
MacGregor had been afraid of that. ‘Oh, not so fast, sir,’ he begged. ‘It’s all very speculative so far. In any case, all this business about the fingerprints and the lighter fuel – it’s only good enough to tie Osmond in with the hiding of the body. There’s not a scrap of evidence to show that he was responsible for the actual murder.
‘That’s good enough,’ said Dover philosophically. He was always more than willing to settle for second best. ‘He’d not get a longer sentence for strangling the poor bastard, would he? Besides,’ – he made another surge in the direction of the door and trapped MacGregor’s leg quite painfully behind the filing cabinet – ‘once we charge him with anything, what do you think the rest of ’em are going to do? They’ll all gang up on him and swear blind that he got both cards in the deal.’
‘Oh, sir!’ MacGregor was growing more and more unhappy as he saw the control of the case galloping away from him. ‘We can’t do that?’
‘Why not?’ asked Dover in genuine surprise. ‘It’s our job to get a conviction, isn’t it? Besides, I reckon it’s probably true. Put yourself in Pettitt’s shoes. Would you leave Knapper’s execution to chance? I wouldn’t. I’d pick the most likely-looking beggar in the group and see he got the job or – like now – both jobs.’
‘If there’s one thing you could rely on that young ponce, Osmond, for,’ declared Dover as he finally actually got hold of the door handle, ‘it’d be doing his own grannie in if he thought it would pay him. He’d not bat a bloody eyelid. Well’ – Dover threw out his chest proudly – ‘I’ve got him stitched up good and proper. He’ll live to regret the day he pulled a gun on me, the ambitious little punk.’
‘You do realise, sir, that we have no evidence as yet against Osmond for anything?’
Dover dragged the door open. ‘We’ve got motive,’ he said. ‘He didn’t want his cover blown in the Steel Band. We’ve got opportunity. Well, he was bloody there when it happened, wasn’t he? And we’ve got . . . ’Strewth, that business of not destroying What’s-his-name’s bloody fingerprints clinches it. Look, laddie, I’ve done the hard bit for you. All you’ve got to do is dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s. It’s a piece of bloody cake! Anyhow, I’ll be in with old Punchard if anybody wants me. After I’ve been to the toilet.’
Commander Punchard might have been highly delighted to have embarrassed his rivals in Special Branch, but actually charging one of their number with murder was a different kettle of fish. Especially when the murder might be considered as having been committed for England, if indeed it had actually been committed at all. At the very least Osmond and his superiors would claim that the lad had been acting strictly in the line of duty.
Thanks to Dover’s typically premature announcement that he had solved the mystery of Knapper’s depth, Commander Punchard had time to consider the pros and cons of the situation. In the end, after much heart-searching, he came to the conclusion that though revenge may be sweet, knowledge of such highly confidential and damaging information is better than money in the bank.
A compromise was reached and the whole incident was hushed up. The great British public were thus enabled to retain their faith untarnished in the police, the Secret Service, the Monarchy, parliamentary government and anything else that took their fancy. Of course, things didn’t just go on as before. Changes had to be made. It was generally agreed, even by Special Branch, that young Osmond’s services could not be retained, but he went out to join the Mounties in Canada with some brilliant references and recommendations. Commander Punchard’s thirst for vengeance was slaked by the award, after a decent interval, of the OBE and a year’s secondment to the Bahamas.
And Dover?
Well, Dover would have preferred to have his mouth stopped with gold but, when they offered him promotion to detective superintendent, he took that instead.