Dover and the Claret Tappers

by Joyce Porter

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  Commander Brockhurst cleared his throat and Dover realised with a sinking heart that they were in for a long night He regretted not having made a brief stop-off earlier but he had thought it wiser not to keep the commander waiting. Should he excuse himself now, or try and think about something else in the hope that it would pass off?

  ‘Dover! Are you listening, man?’

  Dover blinked. Loud-mouthed bully! ‘I’m all ears,’ he grunted.

  ‘Well, I hope so, because if there’s a cock-up this time, I will personally dismember you with a blunt knife! Now, I’m going to give you a brief outline of what’s happened so far, just to put you in the picture.’

  ‘May we ask questions, sir?’ MacGregor’s face was the picture of innocence.

  Commander Brockhurst would have liked to say ‘no’ but knew he couldn’t. ‘So long as you keep ’em short and to the point,’ he conceded grudgingly. ‘Now then, as far as we are aware at the moment, the kidnapping took place sometime yesterday morning. Round about ten o’clock is the guess, but we could be out an hour or more either way. The Sleights live in a pretty isolated house on the outskirts of the village and there were, to the best of our knowledge, no witnesses to the kidnapping.’ Although he wasn’t really used to dealing with Dover, Commander Brockhurst seemed to know by instinct that you had to spell it all out slowly for the old fool. ‘The Sleights are the parents of the missing child. And Mrs Sleight, let me remind you once again, is the Prime Minister’s youngest daughter.’

  ‘I remember her wedding,’ said MacGregor fatuously.

  ‘Wednesday,’ Commander Brockhurst went on, making a mental note to delay MacGregor’s next promotion, if any, by at least a year, ‘is Mrs Sleight’s hospital day. By that I mean she goes off to the nearby town of Granbury to dish out library books in the local hospital or engage in other such charitable work. While she is away, the child – Rodney Colin Murdoch, would you believe? – is left in the care of the au pair girl. Mr Sleight is a solicitor and he has an office in Granbury. Naturally, he wasn’t at home yesterday morning, either. There are no other servants and nobody else lives in the house. No tradesmen call on a Wednesday and the milk and morning post and the newspapers all come before eight o’clock.’

  MacGregor raised a hand. Dover would have liked to raise one, too, but for a different reason. ‘Was the fact that the au pair girl was alone with the baby on Wednesday generally known, sir?’

  ‘People in the area would know for sure, sergeant. There’s a lot of interest taken in the Sleights’s doings, with her being related to the PM. Strangers could have found out easily enough, I reckon. Naturally I’m having enquiries made in case anybody’s been over-inquisitive lately.’

  ‘The au pair girl could have been the source of the kidnappers’ information, sir.’

  Give ’em an inch, thought the commander bitterly. ‘That thought had crossed my mind, thank you, sergeant,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Now, to return to the actual kidnapping. We think the kidnappers drove up to the house at about ten o’clock. The baby would have been outside in its pram because the weather down there was cold but tine. At some stage during the kidnapping, the au pair girl was shot and killed outright. Her name was Greta van Pronk, incidentally. Age eighteen. Dutch. Been over here with the Sleights for about six months. We don’t know why she was killed. She could have been trying to stop the kidnappers or they were afraid she would be able to identify them or raise the alarm too soon or anything.’

  ‘She might have known who they were, sir,’ said the unsinkable MacGregor. ‘Suppose she’d given them the information? She might not have realised what was involved and, naturally, they couldn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut.’

  ‘I’m well aware of all those possibilities, thank you, sergeant!’ Commander Brockhurst began to wonder if he hadn’t been a bit hard on Dover all these years. With a clever young devil like MacGregor tied round your neck twenty-four hours a day . . . ‘We’re following up every line of enquiry, though Mrs Sleight claims the girl was very quiet and didn’t go out much at all. She had a boy friend back in Holland. Now then, where was I?’ Commander Brockhurst caught MacGregor’s eye and dared him to provide the answer. ‘Ah, did I mention that the kidnappers used an old Post Office van for the job? That’ll be virtually untraceable if they did. Those little red vans are always buzzing about and nobody gives ’em a second glance.’

  ‘Stolen, sir?’

  ‘Not as far as we know. They’re easy enough to get hold of, government surplus. All you’d need is a transfer to stick the royal cipher on the side and you’re away. Or paint it on,’ he added glumly.

  ‘No windows,’ Dover pointed out, on the grounds that every little helps.

  ‘Quite,’ said Commander Brockhurst.

  MacGregor still had to play it clever, of course. ‘It’s an interesting repetition of the modus operandi, though, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Is it?’

  MacGregor smiled patronisingly at the commander. Of course, he wasn’t anything like as thick as Dover but. . . ‘Their use of discarded public utility vehicles, sir, so as to avoid calling attention to themselves. First a London taxi in London and then a little red Post Office van in the country. What could be more inconspicuous?’

  ‘And you couldn’t look in and see it was a baby and not letters,’ said Dover, just to show he was still there, ‘because there wouldn’t be any bloody windows.’

  ‘We’d better get on,’ said Commander Brockhurst wearily. ‘The au pair girl’s body was dragged out of sight into the shrubbery and the empty pram was hidden there, too. At about four o’clock Mrs Sleight came home – she has her own car. She thought at first that Greta had got the baby out for a walk although it was beginning to grow dark. Then she found the washing-up half-done in the kitchen, no signs of anybody having had lunch and the baby’s feed still in the fridge. Once her suspicions were aroused she soon found Greta’s body and the empty pram. She phoned her father in Downing Street immediately and that’s when things began to hum.’

  ‘I’ll bet!’ chuckled Dover.

  ‘We’re doing no more than we’d do in any case of kidnapping,’ said Commander Brockhurst self-righteously, until he remembered to whom he was speaking. ‘Of juvenile kidnapping,’ he amended lamely. ‘Er, yes – well, actually we’d already received a message at the Yard before the PM’s people got on to us, but nobody’d had time to do much about it. The first reaction was that it was a hoax, of course. Somebody – a man, no distinguishing accent – rang up the Church Times and told the girl on the switchboard there to take a message. He didn’t give her time to write it down properly but she got the gist of it all right. The Claret Tappers had kidnapped the grandson of the Prime Minister and he would eventually be returned unharmed provided all their demands were met. He – the caller, that is – pointed out that no harm had come to Chief Inspector Dover when he was in their hands but that, equally, they hadn’t hesitated to kill the au pair girl when she got in their way. He offered this as evidence that the gang could be perfectly reasonable or perfectly ruthless, according to how they were treated.’

  ‘That’s meant to reassure people that the baby will be quite sate if the ransom’s paid,’ said MacGregor wisely. ‘That’s always the danger in kidnapping cases. A dead victim’s a damned sight less dangerous and less trouble than a live one. Did they offer any proof that they actually had the Sleight baby, sir?’

  ‘They described what the kid was wearing,’ said Commander Brockhurst. ‘It seemed to fit.’

  ‘And they actually mentioned that they’d kept Mr Dover locked in the lavatory, did they, sir?’

  The scowl that Commander Brockhurst produced wouldn’t have looked out of place on Dover’s ugly mug. ‘I’ve already said that, sergeant! Don’t keep harping on it!’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ murmured MacGregor, knowing that he had to keep on the right side of the commander if ever he was to secure his release from Dover. ‘Is there anythin
g else?’

  Commander Brockhurst began to relight his pipe. ‘Only that we were warned to start collecting half a million pounds in fivers and tenners and to await further instructions. There’s also some rubbish about the release of prisoners but there are no details as yet.’

  There was a pause with everybody in the room thinking and nobody saying anything. Dover was having quite a job keeping his eyes open, but being dead scared of Commander Brockhurst helped. MacGregor had been taking notes and now, as he frowned in deep thought, he began to tap his teeth with his pencil. The noise was just beginning to grate on everybody’s nerves when MacGregor broke oft to ask yet another question.

  ‘Why did the kidnappers ring the Church Times, sir?’

  Dover leapt on what bit of a bandwaggon presented itself. ‘I was wondering about that.’

  Commander Brockhurst looked highly sceptical but it was getting late and there was little kudos to be gained from cutting Dover down to size. ‘We’re not sure why they picked on the Church Times,’ he admitted. ‘My own personal theory is that there were a number of reasons. In the first place, it’s a responsible journal staffed by responsible people. ‘This would ensure that the Claret Tappers’ message was passed on. Secondly, it’s highly unlikely that the message would be recorded. You know what national newspaper offices are like these days. Tape-recorders all over the blooming place. Same with the Yard, of course. Anybody on our switchboard would have tried to record that message the minute he suspected what it was.’

  ‘That seems a very likely explanation, sir,’ said MacGregor with the smile of a hopeful sycophant.

  ‘I’m glad it meets with your approval, sergeant!’ Commander Brockhurst laid his pipe aside because it was really making him feel quite sick. ‘Well, that’s put you both in the picture! Now, we’re tackling this problem from every conceivable angle, but that’s not your concern. What I want you two to do is to go over every single detail of Chief Inspector Dover’s kidnapping. Everything, you understand! I want the whole thing re-analysed from top to toe. Got it? Re-examine every fact in the light of this latest outrage. Something may strike you and, if it does, I want to know about it right away.’

  Both Dover and MacGregor looked considerably crestfallen when they heard what their role was to be. The thought of going over all that dreary old stuff yet again was enough to make hearts far stouter than theirs quail. However, needs must when a senior police officer drives, and the pair of them prepared to make the best of a bad job in their different ways.

  MacGregor summed up his eager-beaver grin. ‘You can rely on us, sir! We’ll sift through everything with a fine tooth comb!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Dover through one of his enormous yawns. ‘Leave it to us, eh? We’ll get cracking on it first thing in the morning.’

  ‘First thing in the morning, Dover? For God’s sake, this is an emergency, man! You’re to start now!’

  ‘But we’ve had no bloody sleep!’ whimpered Dover. ‘’Strewth, I haven’t had my bloody head down for eighteen hours!’

  ‘Come and see me when you haven’t been to bed for eighteen days!’ came the cruel rejoinder. ‘Now, get moving!’

  Thirteen

  ANOTHER TROUBLE WITH WORK WAS THAT IT ALWAYS went straight to Dover’s stomach. The morning after the kidnapping of the Sleights’s baby proved to be no exception and the chief inspector’s forays down the corridor got steadily longer and more frequent. MacGregor, forced to remain behind holding the fort in the office, rightly suspected that Dover was taking the opportunity to snatch a quiet nap out there.

  Endless cardboard cups of tasteless canteen coffee didn’t help, either.

  ‘Oh, ’strewth!’ Dover pushed aside the bits of paper he’d been scribbling on and began extricating himself once more from behind his desk. Hospital’s where I ought to be, not sitting here sweating my guts out! Ooh,’ – he turned to MacGregor in the hope of halving his troubles – ‘it feels like having your tripes twisted by somebody’s cold hands!’

  MacGregor suppressed a little frisson of distaste. ‘Really, sir?’

  Dover had reached the door. ‘Back in a couple of shakes!’ he promised bravely.

  MacGregor got up and stretched his legs. He looked at his watch. Half past eleven, and they’d been at it since three. God, it was turning out to be a long, hard morning. MacGregor gave himself a break and, still trying to ease the ache in his back, wandered around emptying ashtrays. The air was thick with smoke and, in defiance of regulations designed to cut the cost of the central heating, he opened a window and let the sharp, spring zephyrs come whistling in. Soon be Easter, he thought, apropos of absolutely nothing. He started tidying up the papers on his desk, straightening the files dealing with Dover’s kidnapping and sweeping the screwed up bits of scribble paper into the waste-paper basket.

  There was still no sign of Dover returning.

  MacGregor, giving his passion for neatness a field day, moved over and prepared to deal with the shambles on the desk of his lord and master. There was ash everywhere – over the toffee papers and the disposable coffee cups and the spent matches and. . . MacGregor went and got the duster out that he kept in his desk drawer. Ugh, talk about a pig sty! The scraps of paper on which Dover had been doodling presented more of a problem than the other items of useless rubbish and MacGregor gave them a perfunctory glance before chucking them away. The results of Dover’s long hours of work were revealing. Several sheets of paper had apparently been devoted to handwriting practice and were covered with Dover’s name and address in a variety of styles and scripts. Then there was the Art section. Animal studies. Very, very long dachshund type dogs alternating with crude representations of cats made up of two circles, two ears, whiskers and a tail. MacGregor sighed. You’d get better from a pre-school play-group of slow learners! He slung the dogs and cats into the waste-paper basket after the calligraphy and picked up the next sheet. For a moment he couldn’t quite make out what it was. He had to turn the paper round several times before he got it. That uncertain scrawl wandering from top to bottom of the paper was a large capital B. Once you’d spotted that, the rest of the writing – adminton, ristol and ath – slotted neatly into place. Dover had just laboriously noted down the names of three of the towns which had figured, however peripherally, in his abduction. Badminton, Bristol and Bath. MacGregor placed the paper precisely in the middle of Dover’s now denuded desk. It must have been the alliteration that had taken the old fool’s fancy.

  MacGregor shook his duster out of the window and folded it thoughtfully.

  Or was it? That was the trouble with Dover. You never knew whether he was wandering in his wits or whether he really had got hold of something. If there was one thing that really got up MacGregor’s nose, it was being out-smarted by an illiterate slob like Dover. Just in case this was liable to happen again, the sergeant began to rack his brains. Badminton – now, that was where Archie Gallagher, the public school bigamist, had been arrested and Bath was where the Claret Tapper girl, Mary Jones, had bought her blue suede jacket. And the third one? MacGregor moved back to Dover’s desk to refresh his memory about the third town and was thus caught red-handed when the chief inspector burst into the room. Dover’s speed was the result of his mistaken impression that Commander Brockhurst was after him, but that particular terror was forgotten when he saw MacGregor hovering round his desk.

  ‘What the hell are you doing there?’ he roared, leaping across the room, grabbing his piece of paper and clutching it protectively to his manly chest. ‘And shut that bloody window!’

  MacGregor meekly complied with this last instruction ‘I was just tidying things up a bit, sir.’

  ‘You were spying!’ snarled Dover, pointing an accusing and dirty finger. ‘Sneaking around trying to pinch all my ideas! Judas!’

  ‘Oh, nonsense, sir!’ MacGregor’s attempt to laugh the whole thing off was a dismal failure.

  ‘It’s not nonsense!’ insisted Dover, unpeeling the sheet of paper from his chest and hav
ing a quick squint at it to see what was so important. He found himself at even more of a loss than MacGregor had been. ‘You work out your own bloody theories,’ he growled, ‘and stop trying to nick mine! ’Strewth,’ he added disgustedly, ‘it comes to something when you can’t even trust your own bloody sergeant.’

  ‘Sir,’ said MacGregor, holding firmly onto his temper, ‘I was simply tidying up – emptying the ashtrays and so on. In any case, you and I are hardly rivals, are we, sir? We are not competing to see who can solve the case first. We’re supposed to be working as a team and pooling our ideas, if any.’

  ‘So you say!’ grumbled Dover, eyeing MacGregor thoughtfully. Nobody knew better than Dover that even the most brilliant detective needed somebody to do the donkey work for him. He decided to trust his sergeant – well, a bit of the way, at any rate. ‘It’s just that it suddenly struck me, you see.’ He sat down at his desk and straightened his piece of paper out.

  ‘What suddenly struck you, sir?’ asked MacGregor encouragingly.

  Dover had actually got his mouth open to tell him when the door burst open again. ‘Excuse me, sir, but Commander Brockhurst wants to see you and Sergeant MacGregor in his office right away!’

  Dover’s mouth remained in the gaping position. ‘Why didn’t he use the bloody telephone?’ he asked, wondering if there was some new directive about economising on phone calls that he’d missed.

  The young messenger grinned. ‘The operators are having a work-to-rule, sir, so it’s quicker to walk. You won’t forget that Commander Brockhurst is waiting, will you, sir?’

  Commander Brockhurst was not so much waiting as hopping about like a cat on hot bricks. This time the courtesies were dispensed with and Dover and MacGregor were not asked to sit down. The commander came straight to the point. ‘We’ve heard from the Claret Tappers again!’

  Much to MacGregor’s relief, Dover didn’t ask who the Claret Tappers were. No doubt personal involvement had improved the old fool’s memory. ‘Another telephone message, sir?’ asked MacGregor, doing his bright young neophyte act.