by Joyce Porter
MacGregor smiled very nicely and, without being at all rude about it, began to close the taxi door. ‘We just need her help in some enquiries we’re making.’
Miss Montmorency continued to look a little puzzled but she pulled herself together as she saw that her prey was on the point of departing. After all, she’d spent a lot of time and gone to a lot of trouble for them. ‘I say,’ – she jammed herself between the closing door and the body of the taxi and waved a book of raffle tickets in the air – ‘would you like to help an Indo-Chinese orphan?’
‘No!’ said Dover.
Nine
THEY GOT BACK TO SCOTLAND YARD AT ABOUT half-past three, which left Dover with nice time for a cup of tea and a short nap before he had to leave to catch his train home. Commander Brockhurst had temporarily suspended his campaign to make Dover do a full day’s work as even he recognised that there were limits beyond which you shouldn’t hound a man who had so nearly sacrificed his all on the altar of expediency and public policy.
MacGregor hesitated. The old fool wasn’t going to like this. He wasn’t going to like it at all. . .
Dover’s eyes opened wide. ‘What bloody house?’ he demanded thickly.
‘Well, hopefully, the one in which you were held prisoner by the Claret Tappers, sir.’
Dover blinked sullenly. ‘Who says?’
‘Well, nobody actually says so, sir,’ admitted MacGregor, seeing only too well where this was leading. ‘Nobody knows for sure yet. It’s just that they do seem to have turned up a fairly likely prospect.’
‘And I’m being expected to go and have a bloody squint at it?’
MacGregor inclined his head.
Dover settled back in his chair. In his younger days he had been in the habit of propping his feet up on his desk but with advancing age and obesity such gymnastics were now beyond him. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said through a yawn.
‘We could be there in twenty minutes, sir,’ said MacGregor. ‘I’ve managed to get a police car from the pool and . . .’
‘Tomorrow,’ repeated Dover. ‘More haste, less speed.’ He seemed to feel that this statement was a little inadequate. ‘’Strewth, it’s not going to run away, is it? Tell you what,’ – he made the offer with all the magnanimity of a sovereign bestowing a knighthood – ‘you pick me up at my place tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock or a bit later. Then we’ll go straight to this house. Right? So tell ’em we’ll have the police car tomorrow instead of today. Savvy?’
‘I don’t know if I can get a car tomorrow, sir,’ MacGregor pointed out miserably, though Dover knew as much as he did about the difficulties in obtaining transport.
‘All the more reason for shoving off now and trying!’ snapped Dover. ‘And take this with you!’ He poked Miss Montmorency’s blue suede coat. ‘This is an office, not a bloody old clothes shop.’
MacGregor departed to make what apologies and pull what strings he could and at half-past ten the following morning he installed a somewhat subdued Chief Inspector Dover in the back of the police car.
‘Know anything about women, sergeant?’
MacGregor was a bachelor – a shirking of responsibility that Dover usually found very hard to forgive. ‘Not very much, I’m afraid, sir.’
Dover shook his head uncomprehendingly. ‘You’d think she’d be glad to have me back!’ he complained, but didn’t enlarge upon the subject. Instead he stared morosely out of the window. ‘Where are we going?’
‘North London, sir.’ MacGregor was armed with the exact address and even the map reference, but they were not required.
‘Wake me when we get there,’ said Dover.
‘There’ was a good residential area and MacGregor began to have his doubts as they drove through road after tree-lined road of well-kept houses. It didn’t look at all like the kind of district in which a gang of sleazy kidnappers would have their lair.
‘Flamborough Close you said, sarge?’ The driver halfturned and raised his voice to cut through Dover’s snores.
‘That’s right,’ said MacGregor, leaning forward to peer through the windscreen. ‘It should be a turning off this road. Ah, there it is! On the right!’
The police car swung sedately into a tree-lined cul-de-sac and made its way gently past one garden-surrounded house after another. The residences were, architecturally speaking, nothing much to write home about but they were all well cared for.
‘Number Forty-six,’ said MacGregor. ‘“Osborne”. Ah, that’ll be it! The one with all the cars in front.’
The nearer one got along the road towards ‘Osborne’, the more middle-class, middle-aged women seemed to be out, inspecting their front gardens. They were well wrapped up against the cold and the impartial observer might have wondered what on earth they were doing at such a horticulturally deprived season of the year.
‘Osborne’, admittedly, stuck out amongst the other houses like a sore thumb, but it must have had this distinction for some long time. Blistering paintwork, broken windows, gates hanging askew’ on their hinges, a herbaceous border run amuck – these blemishes don’t occur overnight. The tattered posters stuck up in the window’s were of a more recent date, though. Crudely lettered and obviously home-made jobs, they urged passers-by to house the homeless and join the revolutionary organization dedicated to providing Free Accommodation for All.
MacGregor, a detective of some years’ standing, reached the conclusion that it was the cluster of uniformed policemen and official looking cars that had turned ‘Osborne’ from eye-sore to cynosure. He toyed with the idea of regaling Dover with this bon mot but, on more mature reflection, decided not to bother and gave the old fool a dig in the ribs instead.
Dover was barely given the time to shake the dust of the sandman out of his eyes before the door of the police car was torn open and Inspector Horton – all teeth, peaked cap and shiny silver buttons – clambered in. Dover shrank back in horror as the newcomer breezily introduced himself, insisted on shaking hands all round and then launched into an impassioned panegyric upon his own cleverness. Shorn of its grace-notes, this cleverness boiled down to the fact that one of his policewomen, handling a complaint about squatters and hooliganism, had noticed that mention was made of an old taxi She had commented on this in an idle moment to the desk sergeant who happened to be reading an account of Dover’s kidnapping in one of our more sensational daily journals. During the next few days these two apparently unconnected items had been kicked around for size in the police station until they had reached the ears of Inspector Horton himself. He had made the necessary connection and stormed, hot toot, round to Flamborough Close. Much emboldened by what he had seen at ‘Osborne’, he had checked with the Yard and was now unshakably convinced that he had found the place where Dover had been held in durance vile by the Claret Tappers.
‘It all fits!’ he concluded triumphantly. ‘The uncarpeted stairs and hall! The continual pop music! The brown speckled tiles in the bog! And,’ – he turned with a merry laugh to a stony-faced Dover – “I shan’t be charging you more than a double scotch in the Dog and Duck, sir, if I’m right!’
Dover pronounced his considered verdict on Inspector Horton as they all fought their way out of the back of the car. Finding himself at one stage with his mouth close to MacGregor’s ear, Dover hissed virulently, ‘Get rid of him!’
‘Sir?’
‘You heard, laddie!’ Dover made the supreme effort and staggered out on to the pavement. The gardening ladies of Flamborough Close rose expectantly on tip-toe and a coven of uniformed police constables, disciplined to the nth degree, stoically didn’t exchange meaningful glances.
Inspector Horton, blissfully unaware of the black hatred he had aroused in Dover’s ample bosom, proudly led the way, pointing out the sights as he went. Dover stumped along in his wake and MacGregor, as usual, brought up the rear.
They went up the garden path, through the front door and into the hall.
‘Well, chief inspector?’
Dover hunched h
is shoulders. ‘Might be.’
‘I believe you were held in a room on the first floor, sir?’ Inspector Horton mounted the stairs. The paint on the bannisters was scratched and chipped while the wall opposite was daubed with obscenities in red paint. ‘Animals!’ sniffed Inspector Horton before turning again to Dover. ‘Any bells ringing yet, sir?’
‘Not a bloody tinkle.’
‘The chief inspector was blindfolded when he was brought in and out of the house,’ MacGregor put in tactfully. ‘Perhaps we’ll have better luck upstairs.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Inspector Horton. He was beginning to feel rather anxious. He’d gone completely overboard on the theory that ‘Osborne’ was indeed the kidnappers’ lair and had, on his own initiative, mounted a full-scale operation. Detectives had examined every square inch of the house and a team of forensic experts were still hard at it, collecting fingerprints, stains, dust, shreds of material, cigarette ash and anything else that took their fancy. Skilled personnel in the laboratory had been alerted and were already on standby and, probably, overtime. The expenditure of taxpayers’ money and valuable police mail-hours was already verging on the astronomic. A cold hand clutched at Inspector Horton’s vitals! If he’d gone and got the wrong sodding house . . . He pulled himself together and brought the full force of his personality to bear on Dover again. ‘Er – the info from the Yard wasn’t actually crystal clear, sir, as to which particular upstairs room you were imprisoned in. Of course I’ve got my lads going over them all with a tine tooth comb, but it would help if we knew which one we ought to be concentrating on.’
MacGregor gave Dover a heave up the last step. ‘Wouldn’t it be better, Inspector Horton,’ he asked as tactfully as he could, ‘if we concentrated on clues leading to the kidnappers and their presence in the house rather than Mr Dover’s sojourn there?’
‘Ah! Yes. Er – quite.’ Inspector Horton was unaware that the detail about Dover being locked in the lavatory had been placed on the Secret List by the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police himself. That eminent personage had reasoned that there were enough silly jokes about coppers without providing free ammunition for more.
The emergence of a tall, thin man in civilian clothes from one of the bedrooms mercifully turned the conversation into less sensitive channels. ‘Just the chappie I was looking for!’ he exclaimed as Inspector Horton made the introductions. He peered closely at Dover’s shoulders. ‘Yes,’ he repeated happily, ‘just the chappie! Now, if you’ll just let me take a sample we can settle this business once and for all.’
‘A sample of what?’ demanded Dover with understandable apprehension.
‘Of your dandruff, my dear fellow!’ said the tall, thin man, raising his predatory hands and revealing the scalpel and glass slide that he was carrying. ‘I saw you from the window when you arrived,’ he explained. ‘Even from that distance I knew you were my man, eh?’ He began to scrape some of the deposit off the shoulders of Dover’s overcoat. The shocked silence which seemed to be greeting his remarks appeared to bother him. ‘Well, it could have belonged to one of the kidnappers, couldn’t it?’
‘Just what I was about to say,’ said Inspector Horton.
The tall, thin man was proudly showing his slide to MacGregor. ‘Like guano, isn’t it?’ He produced another glass slide from his pocket and clamped it firmly over the first before continuing. ‘I found quite a rich deposit of scurf on the floor of the lavatory. You can practically wade ankle-deep through the stuff! What puzzles me, though, is that we didn’t find it in any of the other rooms. After all,’ – he chuckled deprecatingly, as he put his slides away in his pocket – ‘the chief inspector can have spent only a comparatively small proportion of his time in the loo.’
‘Maybe the Claret Tappers brushed out the other rooms,’ said MacGregor, breaking into what promised to develop into an embarrassing silence. ‘Er – what are you going to do now?’
The tall, thin man was happy to explain. ‘I shall take this sample to the lab and compare it with those from the lavatory floor. If – as I strongly suspect – the specimens prove to have come from the same head, well, all your troubles will be over.’
‘Thank God!’ said Inspector Horton with a great sigh of relief.
‘Personally,’ – the tall, thin man began descending the stairs – ‘I should jump the gun. There can’t be two victims of chronic dandruff walking around in the same case.’ He reached the bottom of the stairs and turned back for a brief moment. ‘Pity it wasn’t one of the kidnappers, come to think of it,’ he called. ‘I’d have liked to present the evidence connecting him with the crime in court. It might have made the Guinness Book of Records!’
Dover was not notably thin-skinned but even he had found this little scene faintly embarrassing. In a brooding silence he went through the motions of inspecting the top floor of the house, paying special, if unobtrusive, attention to the small, windowless toilet in which he had spent so many, not entirely unhappy hours. Finally he caught MacGregor’s eye and nodded.
‘You really recognise it, sir?’ asked MacGregor, who knew of Dover’s propensity for taking the easy way out. After all, if the idle old bastard claimed to recognise this house, he wouldn’t have to drag around looking at others.
‘It even smells the same,’ grunted Dover. He had never mentioned anything about smells before, but MacGregor was pretty fed up himself and didn’t pursue the matter.
Rut (albeit unwittingly) Dover had made Inspector Horton’s day. That worthy man let out the breath he had been holding and thankfully uncrossed his fingers. His professional career and the future of no less than six little Hortons was now assured. But the inspector was not one for resting on his laurels. With a crash that all but scared the living daylights out of Dover, Inspector Horton leapt for the window at the top of the stairs, from where he snapped his fingers in an authoritative manner. Fifty yards away, in the roadway outside the house, a uniformed constable snapped to attention, saluted and marched smartly away.
Dover appealed to MacGregor. ‘What the hell’s he up to now?’
MacGregor shook his head. He found Inspector Horton almost as big a puzzle as Dover did.
Inspector Horton came bouncing back and explained the situation with an energy and enthusiasm that made Dover feel quite sick. ‘The neighbours!’
‘The neighbours?’ asked MacGregor.
‘AH laid on, sergeant! Nothing for you big-wigs from Scotland Yard to do! They’re all ready and standing by their beds, awaiting your convenience.’
‘How many?’ demanded Dover, cutting through to the nub of the matter as he so often did.
‘Neighbours to interview?’ Inspector Horton grinned happily. ‘Three or four, that’s all. I’ve had my chaps going round doing a preliminary screening. Knew you wouldn’t want to be bothered with a lot of old fuddy-duddies who couldn’t see St Paul’s Cathedral at ten paces in bright sunlight.’
‘Too true!’ muttered Dover, the fingers of whose internal clock were already pointing to feeding time. He toyed with the idea of leaving the whole bloody business to Inspector Horton’s chaps but, reluctantly, decided against it. Flamborough Close wasn’t a thousand miles from Scotland Yard and senior Metropolitan police officers have ears like radio telescopes where dereliction of duty is concerned. ‘Well, come on!’ he said, seeing that Inspector Horton was just standing there. ‘Wheel ’em in!’
‘Actually,’ said Inspector Horton with an awkward chuckle, ‘I’ve fixed up for you to go and see them. It’s only a step,’ he added as he saw Dover’s jowls quiver, ‘and at least you’ll be able to sit down. There’s nothing in this house apart from a few old packing cases.’
Dover recognised the force of this logic. ‘We might even get the odd cup of tea,’ he observed as he made his way slowly and heavily down the stairs.
The first of Inspector Horton’s hawk-eyed witnesses lived in the house directly opposite ‘Osborne’. He was Major Gutty, aged ninety-five and the veteran of no less than three wars and thir
ty-odd years as a sales representative for a distillery. Confined nowadays to an armchair in the window of the front bedroom of his daughter’s house he was, as Inspector Horton was anxious to point out, in a uniquely privileged position to observe what went on across the road.
‘He’s got all his marbles, too,’ said Inspector Horton, staring down at the old man and speaking in a normally loud voice. ‘He’s just a touch hard of hearing, that’s all.’
Dover snorted sceptically and, deciding it would be socially unacceptable to evict the old buffer from his comfortable armchair, sportingly settled himself in the next best thing. If either MacGregor or Inspector Horton realised that Dover had chosen the commode, they had enough sense not to say so.
Inspector Horton planted himself in front of Major Gutty and gave him the nod. The old fellow sparked instantly into life, reminding his visitors of an old gramophone jerking out its hollow and tinny sounds. Ever since one of Inspector Horton’s chaps had called the previous day, Major Gutty had been rehearsing his evidence. He’d got it off pat now and only one thing was going to stop him from delivering it. Luckily for Major Gutty’s ambition to receive a congratulatory telegram from his sovereign, that didn’t happen.
‘The Bakers,’ he squeaked, ‘having lived at “Osborne”, Flamborough Close, for three years, vacated the premises some eighteen months ago. The house was put up for sale but, due to the uncertainties of the property market and – I’m afraid – the over-optimistic ideas of the Bakers, a buyer has not yet been found. Until the last ten days or so, the house stood vacant and, apart from the very occasional potential purchaser, unattended. Then we began to notice that a number of unsavoury looking young men and women were hanging around the place, walking about in the garden and peering in through the windows.
‘I told my daughter to telephone the police but, as usual, she chose to ignore my advice and had therefore only herself to blame when she and the other residents of Flamborough Close woke up one morning to find that a horde of squatters had moved in during the night and were in full possession of “Osborne”. It was then of little avail to complain about the adverse effect such an invasion would have on neighbouring property values or to whine on about the incredible disturbances and annoyances to which we were soon subjected.’ Old Major Gutty’s watery eyes took on a malicious glint as he turned to the agreeable task of listing the disadvantages of having squatters for neighbours. ‘Pop music and jazz blaring out all day long, and the nights made horrible by raucous singing and the twanging of guitars. The garden turned into a rubbish tip and old wrecks of cars littering the roadway outside. Inflammatory posters hung up in the windows.
