by Joyce Porter
* * *
It was three o’clock in the morning and the Claret Tappers were still sitting round a television set that had been cold and dead for hours. The air was thick with smoke and they were down to the last two cans of brown ale.
The first kidnapper’s voice was quite hoarse. ‘Look, we’ve got to make our minds up quick. Every minute we keep him here is another minute of bloody danger for us. Either way, we’ve got to bloody well get rid of him.’
The brown ale had given the second kidnapper a modicum of dutch courage. ‘So we croak him,’ he said. ‘That’s the safest.’ He giggled. ‘Dead men tell no tales!’
The first kidnapper regarded his confederate wearily. ‘Why don’t you try using your loaf for a change?’ he asked. ‘Suppose we do kill him – what do we do with the bloody body? There’s over seventeen stone of him, you know. That’ll take some shifting.’
‘So we leave him here.’
‘But this place could lead them to us, couldn’t it, you nit? We’re bound to leave some clues behind us, no matter how careful we are – especially with silly buggers like you messing about. Well, it’s a risk I’m not going to bloody take. We’ll dump Dover somewhere. That way they’ll never find this place and we may even be able to use it again next time.’
The third kidnapper looked up, arms clasped round his knees in an effort to keep the night’s chill out. ‘Is there going to be a next time?’
Too right there is! The reasons we had for going into this in the first place haven’t changed, have they?’ I he first kidnapper’s anger showed in his heightened colour and sparkling eyes. ‘Just because this one’s blown up in our bloody faces, it doesn’t mean we’re going to chuck our hand in once and for all.’
‘No,’ murmured the third kidnapper. ‘Course not.’
The second kidnapper was less submissive. ‘And who’s going to cough up a hundred thousand nicker next time?’ he jeered. ‘They’ll bust a gut laughing at us. I’m telling you, mate – if we let this Dover slob go, nobody’ll ever take us seriously again.’
This aspect of their predicament had not escaped the first kidnapper and he had, indeed, been sweating over it for hours. In the end he’d succeeded in producing a rationalisation which satisfied him and all he had to do now was sell it to his downcast and disappointed companions. He had to convince them that, in spite of some evidence to the contrary, everything was for the best in the best of all possible worlds and that his hand was still steady on the tiller. ‘Trust you to go and get the wrong end of the bloody stick!’ he sneered. ‘You’re so thick you can’t see beyond the end of your bloody snout.’
‘I can see that we’re going to look a right bunch of Charlies!’ retorted Number Two. ‘What’s the good of making threats if you don’t carry ’em out?’
The first kidnapper leaned forward in his chair and adopted a more conciliatory tone. ‘Listen, what’s your main stumbling block when it comes to getting your hands on the ransom money, eh?’ He saw the second kidnapper’s mouth begin to open and rushed hurriedly on. I’ll tell you, mate! It’s convincing the victim’s family and friends that you’re on the level. Right? It’s making ’em believe the chap you’ve snatched will be returned safe and sound if only they’ll cooperate and do what they’re told.’
‘Blimey, I should have thought that was the least of your worries,’ grumbled the second kidnapper, lighting yet another cigarette.
‘Well, it isn’t! That’s just the time the pigs get their foot in the door, isn’t it.’ They tell the family that it’s odds on their nearest and dearest has already been croaked and so they might as well play ball with the cops and help catch the naughty kidnappers.’
‘What the hell are you supposed to be getting at?’
Mercifully the first kidnapper cut the cackle. ‘Simply this – because we’ve shown ourselves reasonable and humane this time, the next time the victim’s family will catch on that there’s a good chance of getting their loved one back in one piece, see? Well, that could be bloody important for us. With that sort of hope there will be less temptation to go running to the cops.’ The second kidnapper was still sceptical. ‘So this Dover cock-up is really a blessing in disguise?’
‘It could be.’
‘Jesus.’
‘You’ll see!’
The second kidnapper blew out a lungful of smoke. ‘I dunno why you ever picked this Dover pig in the first place,’ he complained. ‘He’s an effing dead loss, if ever there was one. You might have guessed nobody’d shell out tuppence to get him back. I know I wouldn’t. Jean said he was a right old layabout and they’ve been trying to get shot of him for years. And he’s only supernumerary on the Murder Squad, you know. They got lumbered with him back in the year dot and then found they couldn’t get rid of him. Nobody else’ll have him.’
The third kidnapper risked a sour comment. ‘Now he tells us!’
The second kidnapper stamped heavily on this flicker of insubordination. ‘My sister told us all this right at the bloody beginning. More or less, anyhow.’
‘Precisely!’
‘I he first kidnapper gathered up the reins again. ‘And that’s why we picked him, isn’t it? Exactly because he is a great fat, greasy, overweight slob who’s not got enough bloody gumption to take shelter when it rains. I don’t remember you lot being exactly keen on snatching one of these six-foot-four, keep-fit fanatics with muscles like bloody whipcord.’
The third kidnapper yawned and went off at a tangent. ‘Me, I’ll be glad to see the back of him. Moan, moan, moan – ever since he got here. He’d have you waiting on him hand and foot if you gave him half a chance. Always trying to cadge cigarettes – and eat? I’m telling you, I’ve had it up to here cooking food for that pig and doing all the washing up after him, too.’
The yawn was catching. The second kidnapper all but dislocated his jaw. ‘My heart bleeds for you, kiddo!’ he grunted. ‘Still, we’ve got more important things on our plate than your effing life and hard times. What I say is – if we’re going to dump Dover, let’s dump him quick!’
‘Haven’t I been telling you that for bloody hours?’ The first kidnapper picked up one of the beer cans and shook it hopefully. It was empty. ‘The thing is – how?’
‘What about the scheme we was saving for when the ransom had been paid?’
The first kidnapper stared thoughtfully at the third. ‘I suppose so. Anybody got a better idea?’
Nobody had.
The first kidnapper sighed and stretched himself. He stood up. ‘Come on, then! Let’s do it now and get it over with. Then we can go to bed. I’m bloody shagged.’
Number Two pulled himself to his feet. He dragged his pullover up and extracted a gun from the waist-belt of his jeans. ‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ he said as he followed the others from the room. ‘Next time I’m going to get myself a real shooter! I feel a right twit, toting a bleeding kid’s toy around.’
* * *
It was eight-thirty on Thursday morning. Victoria Street was crowded but Detective Sergeant MacGregor picked his way through the hurrying office workers and shop assistants with a light heart and a nimble foot. My, my – but life was good!. For the first time for many a long and dreary year Sergeant MacGregor was actually looking forward to the day’s work, though he was finding it hard to visualise what things would be like without Dover’s peevish, obtuse and sullen personality dominating the scene.
Oh, well, who cared about the details? It would be simply marvellous, that was for sure. MacGregor swung his black leather gents’ handbag happily from his wrist. It was the first day he’d ever dared bring it to the Yard but he felt the occasion of Dover’s thrice-blessed dissolution merited something more than that by way of celebration. MacGregor mulled the problem over as he floated on Cloud Nine down Broadway and up the steps of New Scotland Yard. It was only when he was in the lift that the ideal solution struck him. He’d buy himself a new hat! A hand-made, custom-built, curly-brimmed bowler to wear at Dover’s
funeral!
MacGregor was still sniggering happily over the felicity of his plan when he reported half an hour later to Commander Brockhurst’s office.
‘You wanted to see me, sir?’
Commander Brockhurst glanced at MacGregor’s happy, smiling face and sighed. ‘You’d better sit down, sergeant.’
‘Thank you, sir!’ It was going to take a sledge-hammer to wipe the grin off MacGregor’s face.
Regretfully, the commander wielded it. ‘They’ve found Chief Inspector Dover,’ he said. ‘Done up in a plastic sack and dumped round the back of the Old Bailey with the rest of the rubbish. It was the dustbin men who found him.’
MacGregor was surprised. ‘Gosh, sir,’ he said, ‘these Claret Tappers don’t hang about, do they? It’s less than twelve hours since the Assistant Commissioner made his announcement on the television and here they’ve gone and killed poor old . . .’
‘Sergeant,’ interrupted Commander Brockhurst, firmly but compassionately, ‘Chief Inspector Dover isn’t dead.’
There was an anguished pause.
‘Isn’t dead, sir?’ queried MacGregor from a throat that had suddenly gone dry.
‘Far from it,’ said the commander who had already received a formal complaint from the dustbin men’s trade union representative about some of Dover’s remarks to his rescuers. ‘There doesn’t appear to be a scratch on him.’
MacGregor made the supreme effort. ‘Good,’ he murmured.
‘We’ve sent him to hospital for observation, though, just in case. They’ll probably keep him in till tomorrow.’
‘Till tomorrow,’ repeated MacGregor, trying to extract what comfort he could from that.
Commander Brockhurst, feeling that the worst was now over, shuffled some papers briskly on his desk. ‘Still, you’d better get over and see him right away. I want these kidnappers caught, sergeant, and no messing about. It’s bad for our image, having senior detectives snatched oh the streets of London. I’m putting Chief Inspector Dover, himself, in charge of the investigation, of course.’ For a brief second Commander Brockhurst let his official manner slip. His eyes twinkled. ‘At least the old devil won’t suffer from lack of motivation this time!’
Three
THE FROSTY GLARE THAT MACGREGOR GOT FROM THE GIRL on the reception desk told him that Dover had already left his mark (and it was probably an indelible one) on St Basil’s Hospital. Feeling pretty depressed, the sergeant made his way as slowly as he dared along the echoing corridors and up the chilly, uncarpeted stairs. All too soon he reached his objective and pushed open the door of the private room in which, not surprisingly, Dover had been put. Even in the Health Service, some consideration is shown for the welfare and comfort of the sick.
‘’Strewth,’ growled Dover in lieu of greeting, ‘you’ve taken your blooming time, haven’t you?’
‘They wouldn’t let me in before, sir,’ explained MacGregor. ‘They said you hadn’t got to be disturbed.’ It was a black lie of course but those who associate with Dover soon get used to bartering their immortal souls for a quiet life. MacGregor pulled up a chair to the bedside. ‘You’re looking frightfully lit, sir!’ This was true. Arrayed in a clean pair of hospital pyjamas and having been forcibly bathed by a nursing sister who campaigned for compulsory vasectomies for all males over the age of sixteen, Dover did indeed look strikingly more delectable than usual. Medical science hadn’t had time to do anything for such fundamentals as pernicious dandruff, chronic embonpoint and acute dyspepsia but the general impression was still extremely creditable.
The last thing that Scotland Yard’s most accomplished lead swinger and scrimshanker wanted to hear was that he was looking fit for duty. Dover twitched his little black moustache and tried a touch of pathos. ‘Haven’t you brought me any bloody grapes or anything?’
MacGregor hadn’t.
Dover brushed aside the lame excuses. ‘Oh, give us a fag, then!’
MacGregor hadn’t been fool enough to bring his little handbag to the hospital so he produced his cigarettes from his pocket in the normal way and soon had Dover puffing smoke all round the room and covering the top sheet with ash. Dover’s hand closed like a vice round the cigarette packet.
‘I’ll hang onto this,’ he said.
MacGregor sighed. ‘Don’t they come round with one of those trollies where you can buy things, sir?’ he asked without much hope.
‘Got no money,’ explained Dover, slipping the cigarettes under his pillow. ‘Those thugs robbed me, you know. Nicked every penny I had on me – apart from the pound note I keep in my sock for emergencies. I reckon somebody ought to reimburse me.’
Very slowly, so as not to frighten his lord and master, MacGregor was pulling his notebook out. ‘You might try claiming it on your swindle sheet, sir,’ he suggested helpfully. ‘How much was it?’
‘Sixty-four pence!’ said Dover promptly. Too promptly! With a bit more pause for thought, he admonished himself crossly, he could have upped that to thousands of pounds.
MacGregor cautiously extracted a pencil. ‘What exactly happened, sir?’
Dover looked blank.
‘When you were kidnapped, sir. Commander Brockhurst was rather keen that we should get cracking on the investigation without delay.’
It would be an exaggeration to say that these unkind and thoughtless remarks brought the tears to Dover’s eyes, but they certainly brought a howl of protest to his lips. ‘Is there no bloody consideration?’ he yelled. ‘Damn it all, I’m supposed to be ill! By rights I ought to be lying down under sedation in a darkened room, not sitting here being third-degreed by some young whelp of a jack who isn’t dry yet behind the bloody ears!’
There was a great deal more in the same vein but eventually Dover succumbed to the temptation to star in his own drama. He wasn’t indifferent, either, to the sweetness of revenge on the cheeky bastards who’d abducted him. ‘Tuesday night, it was,’ he began, leaning back amongst his pillows and closing his eyes. ‘I’d been working late at the Yard, clearing up the paperwork and things.’ His eyes snapped open and he glared accusingly at MacGregor. ‘Doing your blooming work, as it happens, laddie!’ He stabbed out a grubby-nailed forefinger. ‘Do you realise that, if you hadn’t gone skiving off on one of these stupid courses of yours, none of this might ever have happened?’
MacGregor refused to feel guilty. ‘You left the Yard about eight o’clock, didn’t you sir? What happened then?’
‘I was just walking to the station to catch a train home when, after I’d gone a hundred yards or so, this taxi pulls up at the kerb just ahead of me. The door opens and a chap sort of half leans out and shouts, “Can I give you a lift, Dover?” Well, naturally, I shouted “Yes!” back and put on a bit of a spurt so’s not to keep the chap waiting.’
MacGregor was amazed at such consideration for the convenience of others but he made, of course, no comment.
Dover sank back and closed his eyes again. ‘So, I start to get into the taxi – see? – and that’s when it struck me that there was something fishy going on.’
‘Oh?’
Dover yawned. ‘Hm.’
‘What?’
‘Eh?’
MacGregor counted up to ten and thus managed to keep his hands to himself. ‘What made you think something was wrong, sir?’
Dover opened his eyes and regarded MacGregor resentfully. ‘I ought to be in bed, you know,’ he grizzled.
‘You are in bed, sir!’
Dover scowled.
‘What was the “something fishy”, sir?’ MacGregor displayed bulldog tenacity but he was no match for Dover.
‘Can’t remember!’ said Dover with an evil grin. Pretty boy would have to get up a hell of a lot earlier in the morning to catch him napping! ‘Now, where was I?’
MacGregor hoisted the white flag. ‘You were just getting into the taxicab, sir.’
‘That’s right! Well, it was dark, you know, and I was sort of trying to see who this chap sitting there was. Then, suddenl
y, I felt something poke me in the back. Another fellow had come creeping up behind me! He gave me another poke and told me to get right into the taxi or he’d blow my bloody brains out.’ MacGregor looked up. ‘Can you recall his exact words, sir?’
‘You’ve a hope! You try going around with a gun stuck in your back and see how much you remember.’
‘How about the gun, sir? Did you happen to notice what make it was?’
Dover shook his head. ‘Soon as I got in the taxi, they jumped me, didn’t they? I fought ’em off, of course, but they overpowered me in the end and I was bound hand and foot and dumped on the floor. Then the lousy yobboes shoved some sticking plaster over my mouth and dragged a mucky old sack over my head and that was that. I dare say,’ added Dover with a heavy sneer, ‘that a clever young devil like you would have burst free and escaped in a couple of bloody shakes, but I couldn’t quite manage it.’
MacGregor very sensibly ignored the jibe and concentrated on extracting as much information as he could from Dover’s rather hazy reminiscences. ‘So there were three men involved at this stage, sir?’
‘Two!’ Dover corrected him nastily. ‘Why don’t you wash your lugholes out? One on the back seat and one with the gun.’
‘There was another man driving the taxi, though, wasn’t there, sir?’
Dover was frankly disgusted at such finickiness. ‘Oh, well, if you’re going to count him . . .’
MacGregor stared rigidly at his notebook. One day, he promised himself, one day he was going to grab that fat, ill-natured slob by the throat and choke the living daylights out of him. Slowly!
Dover, unprompted for once, resumed his story. ‘Then we drove off. From start to finish I don’t reckon the whole business of snatching me took more than a minute at the outside. Oh, I’m telling you – those boys were professionals, all right! As slick and ruthless as they come. I didn’t stand a chance. Well, eventually we arrived at our destination and it’s no bloody good you asking me where it was because I don’t know. I told you, I was gagged and blindfolded. Well, I was forced out of the taxi – at gun point, mind you – and hurried into a building of some sort and taken upstairs. Then they made me lie face down on the floor.’ Dover’s bottom lip protruded disconsolately as he recalled the indignities to which he had been subjected. ‘They untied my hands and the next thing I heard was a door being slammed and locked. I waited till everything had gone quiet and then I pulled the bag off my head and removed that damned sticking-plaster.’ Dover felt tenderly at his little black moustache. ‘And then I had a rest. The room I was in was dark so, when I’d got my circulation going again, I started groping about until I found an electric light switch. I switched it on and discovered that I’d been incarcerated in a small room with no windows.’