by Joyce Porter
Dover rose above these petty considerations and, this attack on his personal comfort sharpening up his ideas, grimly spelt it out for Little Miss Dumb-bell: sustenance or else. ‘When,’ he said, ‘we get to wherever it is . . .’
‘Gattersby, sir,’ said MacGregor, reluctantly surrendering the steering wheel to Elvira. ‘It’s probably early closing there, too.’
‘There’ll be somewhere open,’ growled Dover. ‘And this damn-fool girl’d better find it. Teach her to be a bit more considerate about other people’s feelings.’
‘There might be a shop,’ agreed Elvira, pouting reproachfully at a telegraph pole which had only just missed her front bumper.
‘A couple of pork pies,’ – Dover had got his requirements off pat – ‘a cheese-and-pickle sandwich, a ham sandwich, and one of those apple tart things in a cardboard box.’ His face relaxed almost into a smile as he listed the toothsome goodies.
Elvira wasn’t used to this kind of thing. ‘I haven’t got any money.’ Well, gentlemen were supposed to pay for girls, weren’t they?
‘MacGregor’ll give you some. Just get cracking, girlie! Drop us off at this chap’s place and then, soon as you get back, bring all the grub straight in to me. No hanging about!’ He made a nauseating play for Elvira’s sympathy. ‘It’s my stomach, you see. Miss a meal and I’m writhing around on the bloody floor in agony, spewing my guts up.’
Although MacGregor had taken a chance with Mrs Hall and trusted that she would be home when they called, he didn’t push his luck too far. He telephoned through and made absolutely sure that Mr Osmond would be at home to receive them. Since Mr Osmond was a salesman for a company marketing bar accessories for pubs and clubs, his working hours were fairly flexible and he agreed to suspend his efforts to boost the sales of personalised beer mats in order to assist the police in their enquiries. Actually, the telephone conversation hadn’t been quite as gentlemanly as this summary might suggest, and MacGregor was a little apprehensive about how the interview might develop. Dover didn’t care for smart-alec yobboes who couldn’t keep a civil tongue in their heads and, unless they really were seven-stone weaklings, usually expected his sergeant to do something rugged about it.
Mr Osmond lived in a bed-sitter in a part of Gattersby which was at least handy for the railway station. It was an insalubrious, sullen sort of area and Elvira was quite relieved that she didn’t have to wait around out there in the car. There are some things against which even a policewoman’s uniform is of little protection.
Dover and MacGregor mounted the stairs to the second floor with that slow-paced dignity which is so typical of our guardians of the law and so appropriate to an unhealthy slob of Dover’s weight and years.
Osmond didn’t hurry himself about answering their knock and he also took his time about examining their credentials before letting them across the threshold of his room. MacGregor had always thought that commercial travellers were gregarious, open-hearted chaps, ever ready with the quip and the smile. If they were, Osmond must have been an exception. He didn’t even look the part. He was a big, raw-boned, heavily muscular young man in his late twenties, with a battered face, a thick neck and large powerful hands. At least MacGregor didn’t have to worry about Dover’s reactions. Mr Keith Osmond was far too rough and tough a character for the chief inspector to get stroppy with, preferring as he did to restrict his own personal violence to pregnant women, old-age pensioners and small children too young to go telling tales to their parents.
With unaccustomed self-effacement, Dover pussy-footed it across to the chair by the gas fire and sat, there, quiet as a mouse.
Mr Osmond resumed his seat at the table, where apparently he’d been writing up his order book, and, tipping his chair well back, propped his feet up on the window sill. Then he slowly unwrapped a piece of chewing gum and slid it into the trap of his strong white teeth. If his behaviour patterns owed much to the stereotype tough guys he’d seen on the telly and in the cinema, it didn’t make the air of mindless menace which emanated from him any less disconcerting.
MacGregor resolved to adopt Dover’s low-profile approach. Cautiously and carefully he got his notebook out. Somehow one just didn’t care to risk any sudden movements in Mr Osmond’s vicinity.
‘Well, get a move on, darling!’ invited Mr Osmond, rotating his chewing gum into the other cheek and scratching himself very unpleasantly under the arm pit. ‘Don’t be shy!’ And then, as though he hadn’t got enough stuffed in his mouth already, he helped himself to a cigarette from the packet on the table and lit it with a lighter which threw a flame six inches long.
Dover stared longingly but said nothing.
Frying to treat Mr Osmond as though he were a rational human being, MacGregor began once again to ask the same old questions. How long had Mr Osmond been a member of the Dockwra Society. Had he attended their meeting at Bowerville- by-the-sea? How well did he know Mr Arthur Knapper? Had there been anything about Mr Knapper’s behaviour that weekend which had seemed unusual? Had there been any quarrels? Did anybody appear to be harbouring a grudge against Mr Knapper? How had Mr Osmond travelled to the Rankin Holiday Ranch? Had he left on the Sunday before or after Mr Knapper? Well, could he perhaps remember when was the last time he’d actually seen Mr Knapper?
Those answers which were not monosyllabic were obscene. A great deal of Mr Osmond’s conversation was decorated with grace-notes of crude, four-letter bawdy and MacGregor was soon thinking of how nice it would be to take a piece of lead pipe and wrap it round the young punk’s ears.
Mr Osmond got out a large sheath knife and began casually to manicure his fingernails with it.
The interview was getting nowhere.
Mr Osmond knew nothing about anything, or if he did he wasn’t talking.
MacGregor glanced at Dover to see if he was ready to call it a day. He was. Even if it meant getting up out of a comfortable chair and leaving a nice warm room to stand on the pavement outside, Dover was ready to make the sacrifice. He’d had a bellyful of Mr Osmond.
It was at this precise moment that Elvira chose to reappear, pattering triumphantly into the room without knocking and all but getting a fatal dose of cold steel through her throat as a result. Mr Osmond’s reactions were razor sharp.
When the dust had settled and both Mr Osmond and Elvira had recovered something of their cool, Dover got his hands on the large brown paper-bag which she’d brought. The girl had done him proud! That brown paper-bag contained a life-support system that would keep even Dover going for the next two hours.
‘That’s two pounds thirty-five you owe me, sergeant,’ said Elvira. She saw that she had caught MacGregor where it hurts. ‘You’ve no idea how expensive things are these days,’ she added, opening her big blue eyes very, very wide. She turned away to deal with Dover who was trying to fight his way into a plastic bag. ‘Shall I open that for you, chief inspector?’ she cooed, and picked up the sheath knife which had fallen from Mr Osmond’s nerveless fingers when he’d finally realised that Elvira’s entrance did not presage the start of the Third World War or whatever onslaught it was he was expecting.
While she was at it, Elvira unwrapped Dover’s sandwiches for him and unboxed his gooseberry and apple tart. She knew how much gentlemen, especially high-ranking policemen, appreciate these little attentions. When she’d finished she returned the sheath knife to Mr Osmond and, for the first time, looked properly at him.
Elvira was a very uninhibited girl. Her screams of delighted recognition split the air. ‘Well, fancy seeing you here!’
Osmond’s response was quieter and less rapturous. ‘Bloody hell!’
‘Don’t you remember me?’ demanded Elvira, all poutingly sexy and provocative.
Osmond stood up. ‘Oh, sure,’ he muttered, looking decidedly less massive and menacing. ‘Sure. Once seen, never forgotten, eh? Look – I’ll be in touch. Later. Right? Meantime,’ – he glanced round at Dover and MacGregor – ‘you’ll have to take your picnic somewhere else. I’m
– er – I’m expecting a visitor.’
Dover warmed to the uncertainty in Osmond’s voice and settled back even more comfortably in his chair. Only dynamite would move him now. ‘Plenty of room for everybody!’ he quipped, waving his ham sandwich to illustrate his point.
Osmonds’s face blackened. ‘It’s private.’
‘Good thing I’m broad-minded, then!’
‘I’ve got to go out,’ said Osmond, floundering from one patent lie to another. ‘An urgent appointment. I’ve just remembered.’
The Rock of Gibraltar had nothing on Dover. ‘You carry on, laddie!’ he advised, delicately licking his fingers clean before sinking them in the next sandwich. ‘We’ll lock up for you. After all,’ – the witticisms were flowing like treacle now – ‘you can trust us. We’re coppers.’
But Osmond was recovering his poise. He reached for his coat. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just drop the catch on the door.’
Dover was thick all right, but he wasn’t as thick as that. Besides, he felt he owed Osmond something – like a smack across the teeth with a pick-axe handle. ‘Hold your horses, laddie!’ he snapped and jerked his head at MacGregor.
Correctly interpreting, for once in his life, one of the Master’s twitches, .MacGregor moved across and cut off Osmond’s escape route.
‘We haven’t finished our little chat yet, have we? asked Dover with a grin.
Elvira seized what appeared to her like an opportunity to go back and listen to pop music on the car radio. ‘Oh, haven’t you finished your conference yet? I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t have come barging in if I’d known.’
‘Conference?’ asked Dover who was really firing on all four
cylinders.
‘Or whatever,’ said Elvira with a deprecating little giggle. She adjusted the strap of her handbag on her shoulder. ‘I thought you were supposed to be questioning a suspect or something. Silly me! I’m always getting things wrong.’
‘We are questioning a bloody suspect,’ rumbled Dover, glowering balefully at Osmond. ‘This joker’ll be lucky if he doesn’t finish up with his bloody toes dangling six inches off the ground.’
‘Oh, you are awful!’ protested Elvira in a scream of delight.
Fortunately, MacGregor’s ears had also picked up the vague nuances which had been disturbing Dover and he was prepared to do something about them, otherwise they might all have been standing around there yet. ‘Where did you meet Mr Osmond?’ he asked.
Elvira pondered. ‘Oh, it was Breadbury Hall, wasn’t it? One of those dreadful weekend courses on Race Relations or something that they make you go on. It must have been last year sometime. Actually’ – Elvira smiled in happy reminiscence – ‘it was quite fun, really .’ She turned to Osmond. ‘Do you remember that dreadful sergeant we used to call Reggie the Rapist? And that girl from the Lancashire Constabulary who kept taking her clothes off? Ooh, and the things that used to go on in the Visual Aids room after supper! I just daren’t tell you, I daren’t, really!’
MacGregor denied himself the pleasure of cajoling further revelations from Elvira. ‘Do you mean to say that you met Osmond, here, on a course? On a police course?’
Elvira blinked prettily. ‘What else?’
‘For policemen?’
‘And us girls, too.’
MacGregor swung back disbelievingly to Osmond. ‘You mean you’re a copper?’
Osmond’s face twisted in a grimace of disgust, anger and exasperation. His response, when he managed to force the words out through a rigid jaw, was directed at the fair Elvira. ‘You bloody, stupid, god-damn interfering cow!’ he snarled and, as if by magic, a gun appeared in his hand.
Ten
‘OK!’ said Osmond, a trifle more breathlessly than he might have wished. ‘OK. Now, let’s cool it, shall we? Everybody just stay nice and quiet and then nobody’ll get hurt. Right?’
Dover, MacGregor and Elvira gawped goggle-eyed.
‘That’s more like it!’ said Osmond, pathetically grateful when he saw that nobody was about to play the hero. ‘Good! I’m glad you’re going to be sensible. Now,’ – he took a deep breath to steady himself – ‘I’m just going to make a phone call. Right?’ He backed off towards the telephone. His next manoeuvre caused some anxiety amongst his audience as he tried to dial and keep his revolver trained on them at the same time. That nobody got shot probably owes much to the fact that Osmond had forgotten to slip the safety catch off.
The first fumbling attempt at dialling resulted only in the unmistakable tone of the engaged signal.
‘Oh, bugger!’ moaned Osmond.
Dover reckoned that this could go on for ever and, very gingerly, raised one hand in the air like an incontinent schoolboy wanting to leave the room. For one blush-making moment, MacGregor thought this was precisely what the chief inspector had in mind, but he was wrong. Dover was merely seeking permission to go on with his lunch.
This comparatively innocuous request seemed to arouse the beast in Osmond. ‘You move one bloody muscle,’ he threatened in a voice verging uncomfortably on the hysterical, ‘and I’ll let you have it right between the eyes!’ He gulped and, after glaring fiercely at his victims, began dialling again.
This time his efforts were successful and eventually the burr-burr was replaced by a faint, interrogative and high-pitched squawk.
‘I want to speak to Sven,’ said Osmond, his eyes flickering everywhere.
Another squawk.
‘Sven!’ repeated Osmond irately. He spelt it.
More squawks.
‘Of course I’ve got it right, you silly bitch! It’s the du Maurier code. Why don’t you bloody look it up?’
The squawks grew offended.
‘I don’t give a monkey’s whether it’s your first effing day on the effing switchboard or not!’ screamed Osmond, threatening the telephone with his revolver. ‘Put me through to Sven and be bloody quick about it. For God’s sake, this is a flash-flash call, you incompetent cow! You know what a flash-flash call is, don’t you?’
The telephone gave forth a few more peculiar sounds but eventually Osmond sagged with relief. ‘Sven?’ he asked. ‘This is Trill. Yes, Trill! Rabbits my end, by the way. Rabbits!’ You know – ears! Yes, that right. Now, listen, my seams are giving way. What? Well, yes of course I’m bloody sure! I wouldn’t be ringing otherwise, would I? What?’ Osmond listened tensely for several moments and then took another of his deep, nerve-steadying breaths. ‘I am perfectly calm, Sven,’ he said slowly and deliberately, ‘but I need help. No, there’s absolutely no way we can paper over the cracks. Or stitch things together again. I’m telling you – it’s all gone in one big bang. What? No,’ – he laughed contemptuously – ‘not them, not in a million years. No, it was some bloody little tart of a policewoman who just happened to remember me from way back. Nobody’s fault. Just one of those things.’ And then, more defensively, ‘Well, I couldn’t bloody help it, could I?’
Nobody else in the room, of course, could hear the other end of this conversation no matter how much they strained their ears, but MacGregor was fairly confident that he’d solved the problem. Bull-necked young men, guns, gobbledy-gook telephone calls and generous helpings of code names could only add up to one thing. Glancing across, he managed to catch Dover’s eye and generously mouthed the answer: Special Branch!
Dover’s facial expression remained as vacuous as ever. Either the theatrical profession had been deprived of a luminary when he had opted for a job with a pension, or the old fool hadn’t got the message.
Osmond was still talking. ‘OK – Rendezvous Three in sixty. Got you! All four of us, including the girl? Right! What? Use their wheels? The police car? You sure? Suppose I’m cynosure? Well, yes, I suppose we could make it look as though I’m being taken in for questioning or something, but what about your end? No,’ – he reached across and raised the edge of the lace curtain – ‘it’s just a big black car. Hasn’t got “POLICE” written on it or anything. OK, you’re the boss. See you.’
<
br /> Osmond put the phone down. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we’re going for a ride!’
Dover, neither blessed with MacGregor’s perspicacity nor enlightened by it, caught his breath. In this atmosphere of violence, firearms and mysterious telephone calls, ‘going for a ride’ could have a very alarming connotation. However, he didn’t allow his natural anxiety to unman him completely. ‘I’ll bring my lunch with me,’ he said, gathering up the bits and pieces.
Prompted no doubt by some recollection of where the talents of Elvira did and did not lie, Osmond made MacGregor drive, and for this everybody was grateful.
‘I’ll tell you which way,’ said Osmond as they piled into the car, ‘and no funny business. I’ve got my gun right here. One false move and the chief inspector here’ll get it.’
MacGregor magnanimously put the temptation right behind him but Dover, who was sharing the back seat with Osmond, was highly indignant.
‘’Strewth,’ he protested, ‘you’re supposed to threaten to shoot the bloody girl first!’
MacGregor was beginning to get bored with all this playacting. ‘Why on earth should I try anything?’ he asked. ‘We’re both on the same side, aren’t we? Frankly, I think your whole attitude is rather silly.’
Osmond squirmed. ‘You can’t be too careful.’
‘Rubbish!’ said MacGregor.
‘It’s all right for you,’ retorted Osmond. ‘I’m the one who’s going to finish up dead if anything goes wrong.’
‘And you seriously think that Detective Chief Inspector Dover and I are going to put your life in jeopardy?’
‘There’s the girl,’ muttered Osmond sulkily. ‘She’s blown my cover once.’
MacGregor was unsympathetic. ‘If you hadn’t lost your head,’ he pointed out, ‘you could have dealt with that problem without all this fuss. All that’s happened now is that you’ve given her a full-scale mystery to get her teeth into.’
‘My boss’ll fix her,’ said Osmond grimly. ‘And maybe I did go a bit over the top when she came barging in, but I’ve been under a hell of a lot of strain recently. We’re not made of iron, you know.’
