Dover and the Claret Tappers

by Joyce Porter

  ‘There are rather a lot, aren’t there?’ asked MacGregor, removing the compilation from Dover’s nerveless fingers.

  Mr Arnfield drew himself up. ‘Leofric has been collecting car numbers since he was five.’

  Dover turned wrathfully on Inspector Horton. ‘What the blazes are we supposed to do with this load of old rubbish? Start checking the whole bloody shoot?’

  ‘I’m sure that won’t prove necessary, sir.’ Inspector Horton took hold of the exercise book in his turn. ‘The registration number of the kidnappers’ taxi will naturally be amongst the more recent entries. I suggest that all we need do is start at the end and work backwards. It shouldn’t be too much trouble to. . .’

  Mr Arnfield cleared his throat. ‘Er – I’m at raid it won’t be quite as simple as that, inspector. Well,’ he bleated as three pairs of stony eyes were trained on him, ‘you can hardly expect a little boy to be as methodical as all that.’

  ‘Come on!’ said Dover, starting to fight his way out of the clutches of the Arnfields’ three-piece suite.

  Mr Arnfield watched these struggles with an anxious gaze. How was he ever going to face his son again if. . . ‘Leofric does have a system, though,’ he said quickly.

  Dover sank thankfully back into the cut moquette and held out his empty sherry glass.

  ‘Leofric keeps the numbers in separate sections,’ explained Mr Arnfield, taking the stopper out of the decanter. ‘One for the cars he spots on holiday. One for those noted at his grandmother’s. Another for those he sees at school. And so on.’

  ‘And one for those he sees at home?’ asked MacGregor, getting hold of the exercise book again and riffling through the pages with more hope. He looked up. ‘There are no headings!’ he pointed out in a prosecuting counsel voice, having picked up one or two unpleasant habits in his long association with Dover. ‘How are we supposed to tell which is which?’

  ‘Leofric would know,’ said Mr Arnfield, only too well aware that this wasn’t going to be a popular observation. ‘He might be persuaded to tell us which particular page is devoted to Flamborough Close.’

  ‘Can’t you pick out the page?’ asked Inspector Horton. ‘I mean, you must know the numbers of your neighbours’ cars. Once you find the page they’re on . . .’

  But Mr Arnfield had to live with Leofric. ‘I don’t think that would be exactly cricket,’ he said primly. ‘We try to respect Leofric’s rights as a person, you know.’

  Luckily MacGregor was not the only one who had spotted that Dover and Leofric were kindred spirits. Dover had noticed it, too. ‘How much does the little swine want?’ he demanded bluntly.

  Mr Arnfield went to find out.

  Leofric wanted a quid.

  Dover was indignant. ‘The greedy little bastard! He’s not getting a penny more than ten bob!’ He turned to MacGregor ‘Give him a fifty-pence piece. I know that type. They can never resist the feel of hard cash.’

  Out in the kitchen the seven-year-old succumbed to Dover’s superior guile and agreed to point out the page containing the Flamborough Close numbers in return for the shiny coin. He refused flatly, however, to return to the lounge.

  ‘No skin off my nose!’ grunted Dover as Mr Arnfield departed once more, furnished this time with Leofric’s exercise book.

  In less than a minute, he was back with his finger carefully inserted in what little Leofric claimed was the page they wanted. Whether he was right, nobody any longer either knew or cared. As Dover said, for fifty lousy pence it was worth the risk.

  Dover’s luncheon in the Bar Sinister of the FitzCrispin Arms was prolonged, predominantly liquid and very expensive. Inspector Horton, who found himself in – as they say – the chair, didn’t usually patronise so recherche a hostelry but he had on reflection decided not to import Dover into the more friendly atmosphere of the Dog and Duck. Inspector Horton was well known and well liked in the Dog and Duck and he wanted to keep things that way.

  At three o’clock the party, which not even the excessive consumption of alcohol had managed to make convivial, broke up and Dover headed back to the Yard with the firm intention of sleeping it off behind his desk until he could safely depart for hearth and home.

  He had barely unscrewed his bowler hat from the grooves in his forehead when there came a tap at the door and a world weary man lugging a large, box-like container popped his head round the door.

  ‘Dan, Dan, the Photofit man!’ he announced as he squeezed himself into the room.

  Dover could see his afternoon nap going for a Burton. Speedily manoeuvring his body he tried to deny ingress to the newcomer. ‘Shove off!’ he advised. ‘We’re busy! Come back tomorrow!’

  Dan, Dan, the Photofit man was slim and supple. He shimmied past Dover and deposited his equipment on the chief inspector’s desk. ‘’Fraid I’m under the command of a Higher Authority.’

  Dover scowled. ‘How high?’

  ‘Would you believe the Home Secretary?’

  ‘No!’

  Dan, Dan, the Photofit man went on unpacking his goodies. He grinned cheerfully. ‘How about Commander Brockhurst, then? Seems somebody sent him a report, which he read, about eyewitnesses.’

  Dover was squeezing his way back to his chair but he spared a snarl for MacGregor en passant. ‘You bloody idiot!’

  Dan laid one of his Photofit pictures on the desk in front of Dover. ‘Remind you of anyone?’

  Dover nodded. ‘The Queen Mum,’ he said without hesitation.

  ‘And this one?’

  Dover groped for the name. ‘That Goldilocks woman! You know, she was prime minister of somewhere.’

  ‘Mrs Golda Meir,’ said MacGregor, who would probably have shot himself if he’d had a memory as bad as Dover’s.

  Dan pulled out another picture. ‘What about her?’

  There was no holding Dover, now that he’d entered into the spirit of the thing. ‘General de Gaulle!’

  ‘And the last?’

  Dover had been going to say Greta Garbo whatever the sketch looked like and he saw no reason for changing his mind.

  Dan began to pick his pictures up. ‘I should have stuck it out at the Slade,’ he remarked to nobody in particular, ‘and become a second Michelangelo.’

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Dover and added, although he was not much of a one for giving his colleagues a pat on the back. ‘I mean, you could see who they were meant to be.’

  ‘They were meant to be your lady Claret Tapper – Mary Jones,’ said Dan without rancour. ‘As seen through the eyes of Mrs Fish and the most intelligent looking of her tea-ladies, together with Mesdemoiselles Tootle and Montmorency from Dame Letty’s. ‘I’ve wasted,’ he added glumly, ‘the best part of a day on that rubbish.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got it all bloody wrong!’ snorted Dover. ‘None of ’em look a bit like her!’

  ‘That’s why,’ said Dan, pulling his box of tricks closer, ‘I’ve come to you, chief inspector. As I always say – there’s nothing like a trained observer!’

  MacGregor got out while the going was good. Dover, eager to play with his new toy, was quite happy for once to let him go.

  It was an hour before the sergeant popped back to see how things were getting on. He found the office thick with tobacco smoke and Dover and Dan confronting each other across the desk like a couple of cock-robins engaged in a bitter boundary dispute. Photofit transparencies were scattered in irredeemable disarray round the room and both men seemed to be trying to gain possession of the same sheet.

  ‘But that’s not a Roman nose!’ screamed Dan, whose earlier sang-froid had melted.

  ‘It’s what I call a Roman nose!’ howled Dover. ‘Why don’t you concentrate on the bloody pimples? You’ve still not got ‘em right.’

  ‘Pimples?’ wailed Dan, clutching his head in despair. ‘You said “dimples” last time!’

  ‘It’s the same thing!’ snapped Dover. ‘Look, push off and let me get on with it in my own way!’

  Dan laughed bitterly. ‘Get on w
ith it?’ He picked up the torn and scattered result of their joint efforts and waved it in front of MacGregor’s face. ‘What do you think of that as the likeness of a girl in her early twenties, sergeant?’

  ‘Well, it does look a bit like Henry Cooper,’ said MacGregor. ‘But, look, it’s nearly time to knock off now. Why don’t you give it a rest for today?’

  Dan began to gather up the remnants of what had once been an efficient, well-regulated system. ‘We could go on with it tomorrow, I suppose.’

  ‘Er – no, not tomorrow,’ said MacGregor apologetically. ‘The chief inspector’s got to go down to Bath.’

  Dover paused in his efforts to fit Henry Cooper’s face with a new, and possibly Roman, nose. ‘Says who?’ he demanded indignantly.

  ‘Commander Brockhurst’s instructions, sir,’ said MacGregor, conscious that the accusation Dover would undoubtedly make of sneaking was not entirely unjustified. ‘He is most anxious that we should follow up that purchase of the blue suede coat. He thinks it’s the most promising lead we’ve come up with so far, sir. He may well,’ said MacGregor, gazing at the Photofit picture which now looked like Henry Cooper after drastic plastic surgery, ‘be right.’

  ‘Huh!’ grunted Dover, ripping off an unsatisfactory hair line and hitting the nail on the head. ‘All old Brockhurst wants is to get rid of me for a bit!’

  Eleven

  DOVER SAW THE TRIP FROM LONDON TO BATH NOT so much as a railway journey but more as a prolonged nap.

  “I hardly closed my eyes all night!’ he whined as MacGregor removed a fistful of closely written sheets of paper from his briefcase. ‘It’s my nerves,’ he explained in a vain bid for sympathy. ‘That kidnapping shot ’em all to pieces. My stomach’s screwed up in knots and my bowels are . .’

  ‘Commander Brockhurst wants a full progress report when we get back this afternoon, sir,’ said MacGregor, sorting the notes which he had sat up half the night writing. “He’s cracking the whip a bit at the moment. He wants these Claret Tappers under lock and key before they try snatching somebody who really matters.’

  ‘Ho, ta very much!’ snorted Dover. It’s nice to be told you don’t add up to a row of bloody pins, I must say! Not but what I hadn’t already got the message, laddie. ‘Strewth, I’d like to know how many other coppers would have been left to their bloody fate like I was. I. . .’

  MacGregor cut through the lamentations. ‘I thought if we just started at the beginning and reviewed everything that had happened so far, we might come up with something, sir. A new line for further investigation might strike us or some piece of the jigsaw puzzle slip into place.’

  Dover hoisted his feet up and rested them where some other unfortunate passenger was going to have to sit. ‘Or pigs might fly,’ he added helpfully.

  ‘I thought that, if I gave a quick resume of the whole affair, sir, you might correct me or . . .’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Dover, settling back and folding his arms.

  Rather hurriedly MacGregor gave him a cigarette. With a bit of luck the sheer effort of puffing it would keep the old fool awake. ‘The Claret Tappers seem to be quite a small gang, sir. We appear to be looking for a group of about four. Three youngish men and a girl. They planned your kidnapping very carefully. They infiltrated the girl into New Scotland Yard itself either to pick a victim for them or to keep tabs upon one who had already been selected. When they are ready to go into action, the girl gives you a doped cup of tea so that you stay on at the Yard until long past the usual end of your working day. This ensures that, when you do finally leave, things are pretty quiet in the street outside and . . .’

  ‘That’s why I went to sleep in the taxi!’ crowed Dover.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Don’t you remember, numbskull? When I said I’d gone to sleep on the taxi ride to wherever it was they took me, you came over all toffee-nosed and implied I should have been counting the miles or seeing which way the wind was blowing or some other bloody trick. Well, the reason I didn’t was because I was doped. See?’

  MacGregor knew the futility of arguing and, besides, there was just the possibility that Dover had a modicum of justice on his side. ‘My apologies, sir,’ he said generously.

  Dover was not to be outdone in your olde-worlde courtesy. ‘And it was bloody coffee, you moron!’

  There are limits beyond which even professional doormats will not go. ‘Tea, sir! You told me tea! Look,’ – MacGregor scrabbled through his sheets of paper and then grabbed for his notebook – ‘I wrote up my notes almost immediately and you definitely said . . .’

  ‘Coffee.’ When you get to Dover’s age, weight and general lumpishness, you take your kicks where you can get them.

  ‘It was tea, sir. Honestly.’

  ‘Coffee!’ insisted Dover, grinning like a sadistic jackass. ‘I should know,’ he pointed out, the incarnation of sweet reason and brute obstinacy.

  It takes a couple of hours to go from London to Bath and MacGregor had visions of every last second of this time being taken up with a fruitless debate about non-alcoholic beverages. He swallowed his pride. ‘Coffee, sir,’ he agreed.

  Dover sniggered fit to bust. ‘On second thoughts,’ he giggled, ‘it was tea.’

  It was probably only the fortuitous arrival of the ticket collector that saved Dover from some very common assault.

  ‘We haven’t,’ said Dover when they were alone once more, ‘found the girl and we haven’t found the taxi.’

  ‘No, sir, agreed MacGregor. ‘Miss Mary Jones, if that’s her real name, is proving rather elusive and to date we haven’t got very’ far with Master Arnfield’s list of car numbers. Either that kid’s nothing like as smart as his doting parents think he is or the Claret Tappers were using phoney number plates. Either way, it’s my guess that they’ll have lumped that old taxi by now. Run it off a cliff into the sea or burned it up on a patch of waste ground somewhere. Still,’ – he sighed – ‘we’ll keep looking.’

  ‘This case is full of bloody clues that don’t lead anywhere,’ grumbled Dover. ‘Those two cons we slogged hall-way across the country to see – fat bleeding lot of good they were!’

  ‘Archie Gallagher and Lesley Whittacker,’ said MacGregor, although he knew he could have called them Robin Hood and Maid Marian for all the difference it would have made to Dover.

  ‘They’d never bloody well heard of the Claret Tappers.’

  ‘Or of each other, come to that,’ said MacGregor.

  Dover, who wasn’t quite as stupid as he looked, glanced sharply at his sergeant. ‘Wadderyermean?’ he demanded. ‘We never asked ’em if they’d heard of each other.’

  MacGregor was obliged to come clean. ‘I checked by phone later, sir,’ he confessed. I thought if there was some connection between Gallagher and Whittacker – other than the Claret Tappers, of course – it might open up an avenue that would be profitable to explore.’

  Dover stared for a moment or two in silence. ‘You know your trouble, don’t you?’ he asked sourly.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You think too bloody much! Here,’ – Dover’s grasshopper mind flitted away to a more congenial topic – ‘do we get lunch on this train?’

  MacGregor prayed for strength. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘There’ll be a refreshment car.’ Dover began to drag his feet off the seat.

  ‘Sir, we really ought to go over the investigation so far. We’re beginning to get bogged down. Every line of enquiry we try to pursue just seems to get us nowhere.’

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself!’ agreed Dover, marshalling his strength before getting to his feet. ‘Nothing seems to be any flaming good. Mary What’s-her-name’s disappeared into thin air and so’s that perishing taxi. We’ve found the house I was held prisoner in and, for all the bloody good it’s done us, we might as well not have bothered.’

  ‘The Photofit pictures of Mary Jones might. . .’

  Dover hauled himself up into the perpendicular. ‘
Stuff the Photofit pictures of Mary Jones!’ he advised. ‘They’ll be no bloody help. I tell you – we’ve had it! The ransom note didn’t lead us anywhere. Those two cons were a dead loss. And I’ll tell you something else for free!’ Dover had worked himself up into such a state that he’d even opened the door into the corridor for himself. ‘This blooming blue coat we’re going to ask about – that’ll turn out to be a complete frost, too.’

  MacGregor was so ill-advised as to try and look on the bright side. Taint heart never won fair lady, sir!’ he quipped as he staggered along the swaying carriages in Dover’s wake.

  ‘Which explains why you’re still a bloody bachelor!’ snarled Dover.

  * * *

  MacGregor was still sulking when he pushed open the door of the Naicewhere Boutique in one of the more elegant streets of Bath. The way Dover kept equating the state of single-blessedness with a lack of virility never ceased to infuriate the handsome sergeant. He supposed that he ought to be able to laugh off all these slurs on his private life but, occasionally, he found that his sense of humour wasn’t up to coping with the chief inspector’s wit.

  ‘Strewth!’ exclaimed Dover, blundering into a rack of vaguely Oriental-looking draperies.

  The boutique was small and dark and apparently crammed from floor to ceiling with weird and wispy garments piled in untidy heaps and draped over every available surface. MacGregor gave Dover a shove in the back and achieved the six inches necessary to enable him to close the door behind them.

  Dover fought off a long woolly muffler which was threatening to engulf him. ‘Funny smell,’ he complained.

  ‘It’s new clothes, sir,’ explained MacGregor. The buttons on his coat sleeve got caught up in some knitted garments and by the time he had freed himself he sensed that somebody was watching him. Peering round a pile of soft peaked caps in faded blue denim, he located the counter and, behind the counter, a pair of bright and beady eyes peeped up out of the darkness at him. The eyes belonged to a very small, bird-like woman who, once she realised she’d been spotted, moved forward slightly.