Dover and the Claret Tappers

by Joyce Porter

  Over in his corner, under the advertisement for milk stout, Dover was beginning to show all the classical signs of restlessness. It had been a long day and, with the ash from one of MacGregor’s cigarettes dribbling unheeded down his waistcoat, the chief inspector’s massive brow was crinkled in thought. Under the cover of the noise and confusion that Superintendent Trevelyan was generating, he turned petulantly to MacGregor. ‘Isn’t it time for lunch yet?’

  Patiently MacGregor indicated the large clock on the wall in front of them. ‘It’s only a quarter past eleven, sir.’

  Dover belched. ‘’Strewth, I could eat a horse!’

  MacGregor couldn’t think of any telling rejoinder to this, so he kept his mouth shut.

  ‘I’ve been up since bloody crack of dawn!’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s just one of those days, sir.’

  But Dover was in no mood to be comforted by mere words. As unobtrusively as possible for a man of his unwieldy girth, he got to his feet. ‘T ell ’em to send me up a plate of sandwiches and a couple of pies!’

  ‘For lunch, sir?’

  ‘For now, you fool!’

  MacGregor expressed some surprise that Dover was withdrawing from the fray.

  ‘Not much bloody point in hanging round here,’ grumbled Dover. ‘With everybody rushing around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. What I want is somewhere with a bit of peace and quiet where I can think.’ He caught the expression of acute scepticism as it flickered across MacGregor’s face. ‘Well, it’s about time somebody thought a bit, isn’t it?’ he demanded crossly. ‘Actually,’ – he began to manoeuvre over to the door – ‘I’ve got a feeling we’ve missed something somewhere. Overlooked it, you know.’

  MacGregor managed to stay just this side of insolence. ‘Really, sir?’

  ‘Yes, really!’ snapped Dover. ‘And it’s about time you pulled your finger out and got down to some work, laddie! I’ll have all the files relating to this bloody kidnapping lark up in my room in five minutes! Got it? With the sandwiches!’

  By the time MacGregor eventually got upstairs with the cold collation and what few papers he could find relating to anything, Dover was already reclining once more on top of his bed. He dragged himself into a sitting position as MacGregor handed over the pile of sandwiches and dropped the papers on to where Dover’s lap would have been if his paunch hadn’t ousted it.

  ‘Wassat?’

  ‘The papers you asked for, sir.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Dover was more interested in examining the contents of the top sandwich. Sardine and beetroot! Good-oh! He let the upper layer of bread sink back into its place and glanced up enquiringly at MacGregor. ‘You waiting for a bloody bus, laddie?’

  MacGregor fought down the oft-recurring impulse to ram the old lout’s National Health dentures straight down his throat. ‘I thought you might like to know, sir, that the Assistant Commissioner is coming down here. By helicopter. They’re expecting him about two o’clock.’

  ‘Order me an early lunch, then!’ quipped Dover, quick as a flash.

  ‘Apparently there’s a high-level conference going on in London, sir,’ MacGregor went on. ‘The Home Secretary called it. It seems he’s not best pleased with the way things have turned out.’

  ‘And he’s not the only one!’ said Dover sanctimoniously. ‘This whole case has been mishandled right from the bloody beginning. If some people had taken my kidnapping a bit more seriously, we shouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. Anyhow,’ – Sandwich Number Three was excavated – ‘you shove off now, laddie, and leave me to sort things out.’ He grasped a sheaf of papers in a greasy hand and waved them vaguely in the air. ‘I’ve got some thinking to do, eh?’

  ‘I’ll give you a call at a quarter to one, sir.’ MacGregor failed to resist the temptation to be slightly malicious. ‘Just in case you get so engrossed that you forget what time it is.’

  Fifteen

  IT WILL COME AS NO SURPRISE TO EITHER OF Dover’s fans that the chief inspector was Hat out and snoring when MacGregor came tramping upstairs to break the glad tidings that lunch was ready. True, it was apparently going to consist of steak and kidney pudding with Spotted Dick for afters, but this wouldn’t worry Dover, who preferred quantity to quality where food was concerned.

  MacGregor had been having a rough time with Superintendent Trevelyan who still wanted somebody’s guts for garters and would make do with a sergeant’s if he couldn’t get his hands on a chief inspector’s. The noise at times in the bar parlour had been unbearable as twenty or thirty sweating coppers all shouted at each other at once. MacGregor paused wearily in the comparative peace and quiet of Dover’s bedroom and reflected that he must be getting old. He just couldn’t take the strain like he used to.

  In order to give himself a few more seconds respite before rousing the worst bellower of the lot, MacGregor began tidying things up again. This mania for neatness was starting to get the better of him. He picked up the sandwich plate from the floor and noted that it had almost certainly been licked clean. The bed, on the other hand, looked like the centre of a paper chase and MacGregor indulged in a little sigh of self-pity as he tried to restore some semblance of order to files which had been immaculate before Dover got his grubby paws on them.

  And – oh dear! – he’d been scribbling again. That was funny because, usually, Dover only put pen to paper at gun-point. Maybe he was suffering from insomnia? The stentorian grunts, snorts and bubbling coming from the bed would appear to negate that idea and MacGregor returned to wasting some time which he could ill afford examining the scraps of paper. What in heaven’s name was this one? Hither a drawing of a middle-aged housewife in her curlers or the portrait of one of Her Majesty’s High Court judges in wig and gown. Then mere was another example of Dover’s obsession with – appropriately enough – the letter B. Bristol, Badminton and Bath written several times in several equally unformed scripts. MacGregor sighed again. Talk about having your mind in a groove! And what was this? He turned the paper round on the off-chance that he was looking at this final effort upside down.

  He was!

  Why, the dirty-minded old lecher!

  MacGregor had been very nicely brought up and was still, in spite of his gruelling years in the police, something of a mother’s boy. It didn’t take all that much to bring a blush to his cheek, especially where people of Dover’s advanced age and senility were concerned. Activities and inclinations which MacGregor found perfectly natural in his contemporaries became unbelievably obscene when they were associated with his elders. To think that a worm-eaten old slob like Dover should even know about. . . much less draw it!

  MacGregor, with a moue of prudish disgust, screwed the piece of paper up into a ball and flung it into the corner of the room. A split second later, he found himself following it. Hitting the wall with a most agonising crash, he discovered that his all-to-natural cries of pain and protest were being trapped in his throat as a forearm of steel slammed across his Adam’s apple.

  Exerting all his strength, MacGregor tried to shove Dover off.

  The whole incident was, as a matter of fact, an interesting illustration of the perversity of human nature. Dover, who was quite capable of sleeping peacefully through the combined efforts of Armageddon and the Last Trump, had on this occasion been roused to violence by the mere crumpling of a piece of paper.

  It was some time before either party recovered from the encounter. Dover didn’t seem to know where he was, and MacGregor’s throat was too bruised for speech.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ croaked MacGregor when, eventually, he’d got his voice back.

  Dover sank down on the bed. ‘You shouldn’t have come creeping up on me like a thief in the night,’ he complained. ‘You know I’ve got these razor-sharp reactions.’

  ‘Actually, sir,’ said MacGregor, trying to massage some feeling back into his neck, ‘I’d been standing there for some minutes.’

  Dover stopped scratching his stomach. ‘Doi
ng what?’ he demanded with all the old suspicions bubbling up.

  ‘I just came upstairs to wake you, sir.’

  ‘Wasn’t asleep!’ snapped Dover, just to keep the record straight.

  ‘The Assistant Commissioner’s helicopter’s already landed, sir. He should be here in about ten minutes.’

  ‘’Strewth!’ Dover rushed over to the wash-basin and freshened up by rinsing his false teeth under the cold water tap. ‘Here, wath abouth my lunth?’

  ‘The Assistant Commissioner wants everybody to attend a working luncheon, sir.’

  ‘A working luncheon?’ echoed Dover miserably as he munched his dentures back into place. ‘Don’t they know what that sort of thing does to my digestion. ’Strewth, I’ll have the bloody cramps for a week. Here,’ – his eye alighted on the piece of paper that MacGregor had thrown away in disgust – ‘what’s happened to my notes?’

  ‘Your notes, sir?’ MacGregor retrieved the paper and flattened it out. ‘I’m sorry. I thought it was just scrap paper.’

  ‘Ho, did you?’ Dover could tell when somebody was being sarcastic and he didn’t like it. ‘It may interest you to know, laddie, that I’ve all but solved this bloody case.’

  Of course Dover hadn’t solved the case and MacGregor knew he hadn’t. And Dover knew that MacGregor knew he hadn’t. Which knowledge merely drove the chief inspector to more and more extravagant claims backed up by wild talk about the paucity of the loose ends that still needed to be tied up.

  MacGregor remained sceptical. ‘I suppose you’re talking about the three B’s again, sir,’ he said patronisingly.

  Dover was indignant. ‘Paul Pry!’

  ‘Bristol, Bath and Badminton!’ MacGregor chuckled indulgently. ‘I don’t quite see how they’re going to solve all our problems, sir. What’s significant about them, may one ask? Apart from the fact that they all begin with the same letter, of course.’

  ‘You’ll laugh on the other side of your silly face,’ snarled Dover, every chin quivering with indignation, ‘when those towns turn out to be the key to this whole bloody business!’ He was standing in front of the dressing-table mirror, smartening himself up for his encounter with the Assistant Commissioner.

  MacGregor, for whom elegance was almost a religion, watched Dover trying to flatten his hair out with spit and picking the flakes of dandruff out of his unfashionable, Adolf Hitler-style moustache. How could you believe a single word uttered by such a slovenly buffoon?

  ‘Yes,’ continued Dover, gilding his non-existent lily with gusto, ‘you and that clever bugger, Trevelyan, are in for a bit of an eve-opener. And a few others I could mention!’

  A faint frown creased MacGregor’s handsome brow. All bluff, of course. Dover wasn’t capable of solving a problem to which he’d already been given the answer. All this childish bragging was pathetic, really.

  Wasn’t it?

  MacGregor’s frown deepened as he recalled that there had been occasions, albeit few and far between, when Dover had been right. It was an event comparable to monkeys with typewriters producing the Complete Works of William Shakespeare – unlikely but just possible. MacGregor’s mind boggled as he tried once more to be scientific about it and work out the odds against this investigation ending in the usual shameful whimper. He stared hard at Dover who was still primping away in front of the fly-blown looking-glass. The flabby, pasty face was aglow with its usual expression of supreme self-confidence and self-satisfaction so that wasn’t much help, but was there, perhaps, a faint gleam of intelligence in those mean, boot-button eyes?

  ‘You taken root or something?’ Dover had finished polishing the toes of his boots on the backs of his trousers and was now raring to go. ‘His Nibs’ll be bloody-minded enough without us keeping him waiting.’

  MacGregor tore his mind away from Bath, Badminton and Bristol, kidnapped children and threats of mayhem to run a fastidious eye over Dover’s unlovely figure. ‘Your – er – flies are – er – undone, sir.’

  Dover’s stomach was rumbling with hunger. ‘Trust you to go making a fuss about nothing!’ He adjusted his clothing with clumsy fingers. ‘There! That suit you?’

  ‘Really, sir, it’s not a question of suiting . . .’

  Dover rumbled over MacGregor’s bleated protest. ‘These bloody zips aren’t a patch on the old buttons. You knew where you were with buttons. They were slower, I grant you, but they were a hell of a lot safer. And things didn’t keep getting caught in ‘em,’ he added obscurely.

  But MacGregor wasn’t listening. At long last the light was beginning to dawn. Bristol, Bath and Badminton! Yes! MacGregor slapped himself on the forehead in a gesture of mock reproach which was, nevertheless, more genuine than he cared to admit. Why in the name of heaven hadn’t be seen the connection way back in Dover’s office at the Yard when the three towns had been grouped together for the first time? God knows, it was unlikely to solve the case with one wave of a magic wand but it should give them a more profitable lead than anything else had done so far. It was annoying that Dover should have been the one to stumble on the answer but MacGregor was modest enough to realise that he couldn’t hog all the sagacity in the partnership all the time, In fact, being not only modest but amazingly generous as well, MacGregor was on the point of actually congratulating Dover on his perspicacity when that Grand Old Man of Detection cut short the conversation by opening the door of his bedroom and making his way with all possible speed downstairs towards the trough. The Assistant Commissioner (Crime) would no doubt be presiding over the luncheon table with all the charm of a death’s head at the feast, but Dover reckoned that the man had not yet been born who could put him off his food.

  In the event it was MacGregor who ruined everything. Instead of sitting there quietly as befitted his junior status in that August gathering, young Charles Edward had to go opening his trap and diving in with both fiat feet.

  The Assistant Commissioner (Crime) was still trying to slap the deafness out of his helicopter-battered ears and had barely had time to give vent to more than a couple of strings of oaths and three heavily sarcastic threats when he found himself being interrupted by a mere pup of a sergeant who ought to have known better. The Assistant Commissioner almost thought his poor old ears were deceiving him when, after the sketchiest of apologies, MacGregor launched into a short lesson on how to suck eggs.

  ‘You what, sergeant?’

  MacGregor, although he was sitting some distance away at the bottom of the table, recoiled at the brusqueness with which he was addressed. The trouble was that the Assistant Commissioner was more than a little upset himself. He’d had a rotten morning, trying to explain to a bunch of hard-faced politicians why the combined efforts of every police force in the country had been unable to rescue one small child from the hands of a gang of kidnappers. The loss of that half a million pounds hadn’t gone down too well, either, and the Home Secretary had made a very pointed remark about the British Public’s penchant for scapegoats. And it was no good, he had added nastily, thinking that some junior police officer could be put forward as an acceptable burnt offering. No, the British Public (with some prompting, evidently, from the Home Secretary) was definitely going to demand a head with a gold-braided hat on it. For the first time in his life, the Assistant Commissioner felt a cold finger of fear running up and down his spine. As he felt every eye in that ad hoc committee turning to stare at him, he could find only one consolation: if he went, he bloody well wasn’t going alone!

  ‘You what?’

  MacGregor pulled himself together, if only to deprive his smirking neighbours of the joy of seeing him eaten alive. ‘I was just wondering, actually, sir, if I could be excused for half an hour or so.’

  ‘What for?’

  MacGregor tried in vain to catch Dover’s eye. ‘Well, I thought I might be of some assistance in getting things moving, sir. Time being, one imagines, of the – er – essence.’

  The Assistant Commissioner couldn’t have gone any blacker in the face than he was
already. ‘What things?’ he demanded tightly.

  MacGregor dabbed his lips with a very clean white handkerchief. ‘Hasn’t Detective Chief Inspector Dover told you, sir?’ he asked feebly.

  ‘As you may have observed, sergeant,’ said the Assistant Commissioner through rigid lips, ‘Detective Chief Inspector Dover has been too busy feeding his face to tell me anything.’

  Dover, halfway down the table, looked up indignantly, a hunk of bread in one hand and a spoon dripping soup in the other. ’Strewth, what was he supposed to do? Let the bloody grub go cold?

  MacGregor floundered on from bad to worse. He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I naturally assumed that everything would be well under way by now. I mean, Mr Dover’s breakthrough did seem so remarkable that I almost thought we’d be restoring the child to its parents and locking up the Claret Tappers by now. I mean, I thought you’d want to get everything all tied up before the deadline for releasing those child murderers on Anglesey. I was sure . . .’

  I he Assistant Commissioner had borne more than any one man should be expected to bear. ‘Sergeant,’ he roared in a voice that set all the sauce bottles on the sideboard rattling, ‘stop blethering!’

  MacGregor’s neighbours sniggered gleefully at his discomfiture and Dover, his bowl of soup as clean as a whistle, licked his spoon and looked round for what was coming next. There was a most delicious smell of steak and kidney pud . . .

  ‘Dover!’ screamed the Assistant Commissioner who was nearly in tears. ‘I’m speaking to you, man! What’s all this about you having solved the case?’

  He might well ask. He wasn’t, reflected Dover sadly, the only one who’d bloody well like to know. Solve the case? That was the trouble with pompous young gits like MacGregor – they couldn’t take a bloody joke.

  The Assistant Commissioner’s voice exploded down the length of the dining-room again. ‘I’m still waiting, Dover!’