Dover Beats the Band Read online

  ‘I had to behave just like any other loyal and devoted member of the Steel Band,’ said Osmond, his face pale and his jaw clenched. ‘We were told to go to bed and stay there, and that’s precisely what I did. That’s what everybody did. Bloody hell, we’d just seen what had happened to Knapper! We had a demonstration of what the movement was likely to do to anybody who didn’t toe the line.’

  ‘A peep out of the bloody window!’ repeated Dover stubbornly.

  Osmond gestured irritably. ‘You’ve seen the layout of those huts at the Holiday Ranch,’ he said. ‘The only window in my room looked straight out across Barbara Castle Prospect to the sea. I couldn’t have seen anything in the vicinity of the common room where Knapper was if I’d wanted to. And as for slipping outside – not a hope! I shared a hut with Pettitt, for God’s sake! I could hardly risk him, of all people, catching me snooping around, could I? And everybody else was in much the same boat. What with the verandahs and the way the bedroom windows were located and the angle at which the huts were placed – nobody in Shinwell Square could possibly have kept Hut Number Twelve under surveillance. Nobody. Not without going outside in the open. Look, I didn’t like the idea of letting a chap get rubbed out like that, but I’d no choice. I had to comply with orders and keep my head down. And, if that’s the way I reacted, you can bet your boots everybody else did, too. You’ve got to understand that they’re a bunch of absolutely rabid fanatics. From their point of view, Knapper was a traitor of the worst type and deserved all he was getting.’

  Thirteen

  Nobody spoke for a long time on the way back. Not that it was exactly quiet inside the police car. Apart from the turned-down chatter coming from the radio, Dover’s stomach was rumbling fit to erupt and Elvira was snivelling away to herself on the back seat. Osmond had remained behind at the Houston Hostelry for further consultation with the man who pulled his strings, which was just as well since Elvira had, for the moment, gone right off men and had hysterically refused to share the back seat with even so dead-beat a specimen as Dover. T he interview she had had with a couple of Special Branch heavies, not noted for pulling their punches, had thoroughly demoralised her and the threats about what would happen to her if she ever so much as opened her mouth to anybody about anything had so instilled the fear of God into her that it was several days before blazing indignation replaced abject terror. Meanwhile, thanks to her attitude towards men in general and policemen in particular, Dover was sitting in the front of the car.

  MacGregor was again doing the driving and really doing it quite well, considering that he had to shift several kilograms of Dover’s overhang every time it was necessary to change gear.

  ‘Let’s stop somewhere and get a bite to eat,’ said Dover after a prolonged bout of highly audible visceral protest. ‘’Strewth, it wouldn’t have hurt ’em to have laid a meal on for us back at that bloomin’ hotel.’

  MacGregor kept his voice down. ‘I think we’d better get rid of the girl first, don’t you, sir?’

  ‘Bloody good idea!’ approved Dover, generously giving credit where credit was due. ‘Look,’ – the desire to see the back of old Moaning Minnie sharpened his night vision no end – ‘there’s a bus stop!’

  It was not easy to convince Dover that Elvira could not just be dumped out in the dark in the middle of nowhere nor to persuade him that a bus stop per se by no means implied the prompt arrival of a bus going in the right direction. In the upshot MacGregor simply had to insist that, however inconvenient it might be, Elvira must be delivered safely right to her own front door.

  ‘Bloody women!’ grumbled Dover, and screwed another cigarette out of MacGregor by way of compensation.

  MacGregor tried to switch the conversation into a less inflammatory channel. ‘I’m not at all sure, sir,’ he said, ‘exactly where we stand at the moment.’

  Dover grunted non-committally.

  ‘I mean, are we being expected to refrain ffom pursuing our enquiries in every direction,’ asked MacGregor thoughtfully, ‘or have we just got to tread softly in those areas which are sensitive where the Special Branch is concerned?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Dover, already at sea.

  ‘Even the latter alternative, sir,’ mused MacGregor as he stared blankly ahead through the windscreen, ‘is going to present us with a number of problems. Supposing, for example, we eventually identify and charge the guilty person,’ – MacGregor was certainly giving his imagination full rein – ‘how on earth do we bring him to trial without disclosing motive? And how can we disclose motive without blowing the lid right off this Steel Band business? We can hardly pretend that Knapper was murdered because of some sort of quarrel over postage stamps. But, if we bring the Steel Band into it, how can we keep Osmond out? To say nothing of the fact that he’s wide open to being charged as an accessory whatever happens. And’ – MacGregor sighed unhappily as the complications piled up – ‘what about the Director of Public Prosecutions, sir? Will he accept all these conditions of secrecy and concealment? Are we supposed to keep the true facts from him or are we supposed to tell him but make him sign the Official Secrets Act first?’

  ‘Search me!’ grunted Dover. ‘Tell you one thing, though,’ – he settled back as comfortably as he could in his seat – ‘I’m not going to lose any bloody sleep over it.’

  Surprise, surprise! thought MacGregor bitterly. ‘We shall have to decide what we’re going to do, sir.’

  ‘Not tonight, we shan’t!’ retorted Dover firmly.

  ‘The problem will still be there in the morning, sir.’

  ‘I didn’t like the look of that young punk the moment I clapped eyes on him,’ growled Dover, going off as was his wont at any old tangent. ‘A right cold-blooded fish! Fancy skulking under the bed-clothes while some poor bastard’s getting croaked next door!’ Dover’s indignation might well have been justified. After all, there’s absolutely no proof that he himself would have slept peacefully through somebody being murdered in the same room with him. He might, or he might not. It would all have depended on how much noise was being made.

  ‘He did find himself in a most desperate situation, sir,’ said MacGregor, anxious to be fair.

  ‘I didn’t go a bundle on that other chap, either,’ said Dover darkly. ‘Toffee-nosed, lah-di-dah ponce! Who does he think he is, eh? Laying down the law like a . . .’ Since the comparison failed to come tripping easily to the tongue, Dover substituted a contemptuous flap of his hand. ‘We don’t even know what his proper name is. Or his bloody rank.’ Dover’s eyes bulged indignantly as a horrible suspicion seeped into his mind. ‘’Strewth, I’ll bet the beggar’s junior to me! I’ll stake my bloody pension on it! He’ll be some lousy, jumped-up detective inspector who’s still wetting his bed every night! And he’s got the bloody nerve to start pushing me around and interfering with my work. Well, he’s got another bloody think coming!’ Dover marshalled all his energies for one glorious gesture of defiance which involved the use of only two fingers. ‘I don’t give a monkey’s for him and his bloody bits of paper!’ he declared stoutly. ‘Nobody’s going to stop me doing my duty.’

  It was fortunate that MacGregor could recognise hot air when he saw it, otherwise the shock of hearing the chief inspector using four-letter words like ‘work’ and ‘duty’ in a non-pejorative sense might have sent him driving the car into the nearest ditch. As it was, he contented himself with issuing the warning he was sure Dover was longing to hear. ‘I’m afraid we must take Sven seriously, sir. After all, he has all the power of Special Branch behind him.’

  ‘Bloody Swede!’ snarled Dover in what should have been one last token explosion of defiance. But, instead of letting things fizzle gently out in the normal way, Dover lowered his voice. ‘Actually, laddie, I’ve been thinking.’

  MacGregor’s heart sank. ‘Have you, sir?’

  Dover glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Elvira’s ears weren’t flapping. He saw that she was still too cocooned in her own troubles to be bothered eavesdropping
on a couple of rotten male chauvinists. ‘Punchard!’ hissed Dover, revealing his secret weapon with a snicker of triumph.

  ‘Punchard, sir?’ repeated MacGregor. ‘Our Punchard?’

  ‘Who else?’ Dover heaved himself closer to MacGregor and the gear lever disappeared totally from view. Commander Punchard was head of the Murder Squad and Dover’s immediate boss. It was not a name, therefore, to be shouted from the housetops. ‘Punchard,’ hissed Dover, ‘and’ – his lips approached right up to MacGregor’s ear – ‘Croft-Fisher!’

  ‘Croft-Fisher, sir?’ Even at this moment of extreme tension and high drama, MacGregor couldn’t help marvelling how odd it was that Dover could always remember names when he wanted to. ‘Commander Croft-Fisher, sir? The head of Special Branch?’

  ‘They loathe each other’s guts!’ crooned Dover ecstatically. ‘Have done for years. Croft-Fisher tried to shoot Punchard once.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s quite true, actually, sir.’

  ‘’Course it’s bloody true!’ snarled Dover. ‘You calling me a liar? I met a chap who knew somebody who was there when it happened. It was right after Punchard got Croft-Fisher’s blueeyed boy put away for five years for taking bribes. ’Strewth, you’ll be telling me next that wasn’t a frame-up.’

  ‘Well, actually, sir . . .’

  ‘I know the copper who did it!’ yelped Dover. ‘He’s a bloody chief inspector now. He faked the lot – photographs, tape recordings, bank statements, everything. And planted the marked money in the chap’s sofa. You know Punchard – nothing if not thorough.’

  MacGregor could see little profit in arguing about these hardy annuals of Scotland Yard mythology. Commander Punchard was a tough, ambitious man and, if he hadn’t in reality committed all the crimes of which rumour accused him, it probably wasn’t for the want of trying. It was much more important to find out what Dover had in mind – though MacGregor had a horrible sinking feeling that he already knew. ‘How do Commander Punchard and Commander Croft-Fisher come into the picture, sir?’

  Dover chuckled. ‘If you want to go spitting in Special Branch’s eye, Punchard’s your man,’ he said. ‘Back you up to the bloody hilt. Through thick and thin. Shoulder to shoulder,’ declared Dover, letting his wishful thinking run riot. ‘I’m going to see him first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Oh, do you think that’s wise, sir?’ MacGregor wasn’t certain his hands were shaking but he dropped his speed down to twenty miles an hour just in case. Memories of past encounters between Commander Punchard and Dover came flooding in. The wounding aspersions which had been cast, in a bellow penetrating to the furthermost recesses of Scotland Yard, on Dover’s work-rate, honesty, intelligence and parentage. The hysterical threats of actual bodily harm if either dyspepsia or constipation cropped up in the discussion again. The aweinspiring spectacle of Commander Punchard, tears of frustration streaming down his face, kicking his desk to pieces while Dover went mulishly on trying to squeeze another week’s sick leave out of him.

  Ah, those were the days.

  Not that there’d been anything like that recently. Commander Punchard’s doctor had seen to that. Worried about rising blood pressure, apoplexy and cardiac arrest, he had sensibly put Dover in the forbidden-fruit category. Nowadays Commander Punchard kept Dover at a distance, communicating with him only through intermediaries and ensuring that he was assigned to cases as far away as possible from London. Commander Punchard, MacGregor suspected, was not going to be best pleased to see Dover’s pasty face and moth-eaten moustache looming up over his mid-morning coffee.

  ‘Only thing to do,’ grunted Dover, answering MacGregor’s question of three paragraphs back. ‘Like I said, with Punchard backing us, Special Branch can stuff it. He won’t stand for that bunch of parlour pinks telling us how to do our job.’

  ‘Even Commander Punchard might find himself inhibited by the Official Secrets Act, sir.’

  ‘Garn!’ snorted Dover, revealing a hitherto unsuspected veneration for his boss. ‘Old Punchie doesn’t give that’ – Dover achieved a flabby snap of his fingers – ‘for all your red tape rubbish!’

  Once he realised that nothing was going to stop the chief inspector (except if he forgot or simply over-slept), MacGregor felt obliged to see that protocol was observed. ‘Very well, sir,’ he said with quiet resignation, ‘I’ll ring up and make an appointment for you.’

  Dover came down from Cloud Nine with a bump. It was three years since he’d actually met the commander face to face and there was clearly no future in giving the pig-headed old bastard prior warning, ‘I’ll just drop in on the off chance,’ said Dover airily. ‘No need to make a bloody meal of it. Besides,’ he went on crossly as he saw that MacGregor was about to object, ‘Special Branch may have a tap on his phones or something. We’ve got to box this one careful, you know, or we’ll be right up the bloody creek without a leg to stand on.’

  What really happened when Dover finally bulldozed his way into the epicentrum of the Murder Squad has never been revealed. Voices where certainly raised in anger because a complaint was received from as far away as Wellington Barracks, and Dover certainly looked pretty groggy when he came staggering through to the outer office where MacGregor, loyally hoping for the worst, awaited him. There is no proof that actual physical violence was used. Those who claim it was are thought to be relying too literally on Commander Punchard’s oft-repeated aphorism to the effect that everybody is capable of murder and, when he saw that effing slob Dover, he knew he bloody well was. Nor is the rumour that Commander Punchard tried to commit suicide anything more than a complete misinterpretation of what happened. Anybody who has ever been closeted in a confined space with Chief Inspector Dover will know that the overpowering desire to get a window open is merely to obtain fresh air and not, usually, to facilitate self immolation.

  ‘You weren’t in there very long, sir,’ observed MacGregor, who’d made it two and a quarter minutes on his watch.

  Dover was still a bit breathless. ‘Old Punchard isn’t much of a one for messing about.’

  They had retired for tea, buns and convalescence to a nearby cafe. Dover was temporarily banned from the canteen in Scotland Yard for trying to consume his lunch while still pushing his tray along the counter and before reaching the cash desk.

  ‘What did he say about our investigation into Knapper’s murder, sir?’

  ‘Eh. Oh, that.’ Dover reached for a sticky bun. ‘Oh, that’s OK. Carte blanche. He hardly let me get the words out of my mouth before he was bawling his head off. “Do what you like!” he said. “Just bloody well get on with it!” I like a man who knows his own mind.’

  MacGregor poked nervously around his tea cup with one of those plastic spoons that look like a doctor’s spatula. ‘He understood all the implications, did he, sir? About the interest Special Branch are taking?’

  ‘I though he was going to have a stroke!’ chuckled Dover. ‘He sort of lifted his fists up to the ceiling as soon as I mentioned Croft-Fisher’s name, and shook ’em.’

  ‘But what did he say, sir?’

  ‘That Croft-Fisher was a bigger villain than me. And then he told me to bugger off and get on with what I was being paid for, for once in my life. You know what a terrific sense of humour he’s got.’

  MacGregor abandoned his cup of tea altogether. ‘He did understand the position, sir? That we’re involved in a case in which Special Branch are intimately concerned and that, if we just go ahead as normal, we may be putting the under-cover activities of one of their men at risk? And that a senior Special Branch officer has specifically and unequivocally warned us off? And made us sign the Official Secrets Act which may expose us to criminal prosecution if we go ahead and do what you tell me Commander Punchard says we’re to do?’

  Dover wasn’t taking too kindly to all this harassment. ‘Get out and get on with it,’ he said sullenly. ‘Those were his very words.’

  ‘And will he protect us if we come into conflict with Special Branch?’


  ‘To the death,’ said Dover. ‘Action – that’s what he wants. Even told me that getting up off your backside was the best cure for piles.’

  ‘You’d time to discuss your health with him, sir?’ asked MacGregor weakly.

  ‘Not properly,’ said Dover, dampening his forefinger so as to mop up a few remaining crumbs. ‘I was too busy talking about my promotion. Do you know what he said when I told him I was overdue for superintendent? He said, “Payment by results!’’ See what he was getting at? All I have to do is nail this joker who croaked What’s-his-name and it’s another couple of thou a year in my pocket. At least.’ The prospect of such untold wealth made Dover reckless and he despatched MacGregor for more supplies of tea and cakes.

  MacGregor didn’t find that the likelihood of his being hanged for a lamb concentrated his mind in the least. Either Dover was erring on the side of wishful thinking or Commander Punchard had gone soft in the head. Probably both. MacGregor picked up the two small brown coins of the realm, which was all he got back for his pound note, and tried to think positively. Would ten years in one of Her Majesty’s prisons be any worse than a life sentence of wet-nursing Dover? Not unless he and Dover were called upon to pay their debt to society in the same cell. MacGregor pulled himself together. Whatever happened, Dover would never finish up in jail. If there was one thing the old fool was expert in it was sliding out from under and coming up smelling roses. If there was a price to be paid for tangling with Special Branch, you could bet your boots it wouldn’t be Wilfred Dover paying it.

  ‘What are we going to do? echoed Dover in aggrieved tones. ‘’Strewth, I haven’t got over old Punchard yet.’