Dover and the Claret Tappers Read online

  Dover’s response this time was pure instinct. ‘I think I’d better let young MacGregor here put you all in the picture,’ he said with an air of sweet benevolence that made several of those present want to throw up. ‘It’ll be good practice for the lad in marshalling his ideas and expressing himself. My own part in the successful investigation of this case’ – Dover cast his eyes down modestly – ‘is really over now. I wish I could do more, but I’m afraid the old tripes are playing me up again. A legacy from the war, you know,’ Dover added for the benefit of the totally credulous in his audience. He nodded at MacGregor. ‘Well, come on, laddie! Let’s be hearing from you!’

  Having successfully dragged himself out of the mire by standing on his sergeant’s head, Dover lost interest in that part of the proceedings. Grabbing his knife and fork in either hand, he smiled up ingratiatingly at the serving wench in the hope of getting an extra large helping of the steak and kidney.

  MacGregor should, of course, have hit the ball straight back into Dover’s teeth, but few of us can resist the opportunity to show off. MacGregor looked at the expectant faces round the table – all those senior police officers who could play such an effective role in furthering a young man’s career . . .

  MacGregor cleared his throat, smiled his most winning smile, straightened his tie and stood up. Fame and fortune, here we come! ‘Our main problem, gentlemen, has been our inability to get a line on the identity of the Claret Tappers. And, as you know only too well, apprehension without identification is a virtual impossibility.’

  ‘Oh, get on with it, for Christ’s sake!’ The Assistant Commissioner took the words right out of Dover’s mouth.

  MacGregor swallowed his hasty retort like the sensible little policeman he was and tried again. ‘To appreciate the situation fully, we have to go right back to the beginning . . .’

  ‘Oh, no, we bloody don’t!’ This time the Assistant Commissioner’s voice had quite a sharp edge to it.

  MacGregor broke into a despairing gabble. ‘Chief Inspector Dover was, unfortunately, unable to give us much help or information about the Claret Tappers. Not that any blame attaches to him tor this,’ he added hurriedly, taking thought for all the morrows Dover would have in which to wreak his revenge. ‘The Claret Tappers took every precaution to ensure that the chief inspector neither saw nor heard anything which would betray them. So, gentlemen, we were obliged to look around for other avenues to explore. Now,’ – MacGregor gulped in another great lungful of breath – ‘you may recall that the price demanded for Chief Inspector Dover’s release was not only a considerable sum of money . . .’

  ‘Which they didn’t get!’ broke in the Assistant Commissioner gleefully.

  ‘. . . but the releasing of a couple of convicted criminals from prison as well.’

  ‘Arthur Galsworthy and Elsie Whacker,’ said Dover, just to let everybody know he was still there and kicking.

  ‘Er – Archie Gallagher and Lesley Whittacker. actually, sir,’ MacGregor corrected him as tactfully as possible. ‘A bigamist and a shop-lifter, if you remember.’

  The Assistant Commissioner reached for the mustard. ‘I always said not enough attention was being paid to those two.’

  ‘We did interview both prisoners, sir,’ said MacGregor, ‘and questioned them very closely. The trouble was that we didn’t appreciate the significance of what they told us. We came away from the interviews feeling that we had learned precisely . . . nothing.’

  ‘Has anybody ever told you that you ought to be on the stage, sergeant?’ asked Superintendent Trevelyan. ‘Even country bumpkins like us can see that your talents are wasted in the police.’

  This remark brought a few appreciative sniggers from the superintendent’s cronies, but MacGregor pressed on as though there had been no interruption. ‘In actual fact, however, the chief inspector and I had been handed our first clue on – if I may coin a phrase – a plate.’

  Dover nodded enthusiastically and went on scraping out the vegetable dishes.

  ‘Both Gallagher and Whittacker revealed the vital facts in almost casual asides . . .’

  ‘Can’t say I remember Elsie Whacker revealing any vital facts!’ observed Dover trying to curry cheap popularity by pretending to be something of a dog.

  MacGregor let his frustration show at last. ‘If I could continue without these continual interruptions,’ he said icily. ‘Now, Archie Gallagher let the fact drop that he had been arrested for bigamy at Badminton and Miss Whittacker told us that she had stood her trial at Bristol. Both prisoners were tried at much the same time, some twelve months earlier.

  Dover paused with a heavily loaded fork half-way to his mouth. Well, he’d be damned! So that was what MacGregor had been yacking on about! Dover had no intention, of course, of letting his sergeant enjoy his moment of glory and proceeded to steal the pitiful thunder without a qualm. In other words, they were both brought to trial and sentenced at the same Crown Court!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed MacGregor unhappily as all eyes swung round to stare at Dover. ‘Bristol Crown Court is the link we were looking for.’

  ‘The link between Whittacker and Gallagher,’ corrected the Assistant Commissioner sharply. He was looking tar from starry-eyed. ‘I fail to see how you tie this up with the Claret Tappers.’

  ‘It’s my guess, sir,’ – MacGregor felt Dover’s irate glance on him and corrected himself submissively – it’s our guess, sir, that the Claret Tappers must have been present at that session of the court. How else would they have known about Whittacker and Gallagher?’

  The landlord’s wife was clearing away the empty plates while the waitress brought the pudding course in. Superintendent Trevelyan accepted his dish of Spotted Dick but made no attempt to eat it. ‘I don’t get it!’ he complained. ‘Surely the Claret Tappers had some proper reason for wanting those two cons sprung. Why make it a condition of Dover’s release otherwise?’

  MacGregor leaned excitedly across the table, only too happy to sort things out for the superintendent. ‘Ah, that’s what we thought at first, sir, but it’s clear now that all this business about freeing prisoners from jail or Broadmoor patients is just another red herring. The Claret Tappers were trying to confuse the picture, you see, and I must say’ – MacGregor very considerately didn’t look at Dover – ‘they succeeded.’

  The Assistant Commissioner refused the Spotted Dick and accepted ice-cream in lieu. He waved his spoon in an arc which more or less included Dover. ‘Not bad,’ he acknowledged grudgingly.

  ‘Not bad?’ repeated Dover irately. The police officer sitting next to him was on a diet so there was a plate of Spotted Dick going spare and the chief inspector didn’t want to miss it. ‘’Strewth, it’s bloody marvellous!’

  ‘And that’s not all, sir,’ said MacGregor.

  ‘Too right it isn’t!’ agreed Dover, finding to his great delight that his other neighbour was worrying about his waistline, too. Three puds for the price of one! Smashing! Dover’s plate was soon running over. Tell ’em the rest, laddie!’ he advised as he sank his spoon into that gorgeous, melting, soggy mess. ‘And don’t be so bloody long-winded about it!’

  MacGregor had been sitting on the files which he had rescued from Dover’s clutches and he now, with some contortions, produced them. ‘The girl . . .’ – he flipped anxiously through the pages – ‘the one who took a job in the Yard canteen as a waitress and who, we believe, tipped off the kidnappers when Chief Inspector Dover was leaving and . . . Ah, Miss Mary Jones! An obvious alias.’

  Several of the listening policemen had lit up cigarettes and Dover risked choking himself as he gobbled up his afters, hoping to have consumed all before the cigarette packets were put away.

  ‘Now, Miss Mary Jones,’ MacGregor went on, unaware that he had eaten and drunk practically nothing at lunch, ‘was a very elusive young lady.’ He gave a bit of a laugh but, if this was an attempt to liven up the proceedings, it failed. The smoking, tooth-picking coppers were growing somnolent and the yawn
s were coming thicker and faster than the grunts of professional appreciation. ‘In fact,’ admitted MacGregor ruefully, ‘virtually all we were able to find out about her was that she owned a coat which had been bought in Bath.’

  The Assistant Commissioner forced his eyes open and rubbed the back of his neck vigorously. ‘Fascinating! he said and glared down the table at Dover who, with the Spotted Dick still damp on his lapels, was busy cadging a fag off his next-door neighbour. ‘Another connection with the – er – West Country, of course.’

  ‘That’s right, sir! We checked with the shopkeeper who sold the coat but she was unable to remember anything helpful. Still, it’s the West Country connection that counts – as you so cleverly saw, sir. It’s really the clincher in my opinion. It proves that that’s the part of the world we ought to be looking for the Claret Tappers in. And,’ concluded MacGregor triumphantly, ‘Salisbury and Fish Down aren’t a thousand miles from Bath, are they?’

  ‘About forty, actually,’ said Superintendent Trevelyan, who was not alone in having difficulty keeping his eyes open.

  ‘Well,’ asked the Assistant Commissioner, ‘what are you waiting for?’

  ‘Sir?’

  The Assistant Commissioner dropped the third spoonful of sugar into his coffee, ‘If the solution to the kidnapping lies in Bristol or wherever, what the hell are you doing sitting here? This business is supposed to be getting the very top priority, sergeant. It’s the Prime Minister’s grandson who’s been snatched, not some crummy nobody we’ve never heard of.’ The Assistant Commissioner tasted his coffee and grimaced. It was cold and bitter. ‘Well, get moving, sergeant!’ he roared.

  MacGregor all but ruptured himself scrambling to his feet. ‘I’m on my way, sir!’

  The Assistant Commissioner (Crime) bawled a final instruction: ‘And take Dover with you!’

  Sixteen

  IT WAS THREE DAYS BEFORE MACGREGOR CAUGHT up with Dover – not that he’d been trying all that hard. The touching reunion took place in their poky office at Scotland Yard. MacGregor just opened the door and . . .

  ‘Where the bloody hell do you think you’ve been?’ MacGregor realised that he’d come home at last. He closed the door behind him. ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir,’ he began.

  ‘Sorry?’ Dover was going to need a great deal more in the way of reparations than that. ‘You miserable little rat!’

  ‘It was hardly my fault, sir,’ protested MacGregor. ‘I managed to make the superintendent wait all of ten minutes, but after that I just couldn’t hold him.’

  ‘Blackleg!’ roared Dover. ‘You knew where I was!’

  This was true and MacGregor didn’t attempt to deny it. The fact was that in the middle of the mass stampede to fulfil the Assistant Commissioner’s orders and get to Bristol, Dover had thrown a tiny spanner in the works by announcing that he would have to pay a short visit before undertaking the journey. Ignoring the protests that this statement aroused, he had ambled off to the downstairs gents’ – and as far as anybody knew had remained there.

  ‘When I came out,’ Dover grumbled on as he watched MacGregor squeeze into the chair behind his desk, ‘you’d all gone.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I assumed that you’d follow us.’

  ‘I did!’ snarled Dover. ‘All over the bloody country. Every time I arrived anywhere, you bloody lot had moved on somewhere else.’

  MacGregor permitted himself the faintest shrug of his shoulders. ‘Once we got the first clue, sir, we had to get a move on. The child’s life could have been in deadly danger.’

  ‘Never mind that it was my bloody case,’ said Dover with an aggrieved sniff. ‘Never mind that I was the one who bloody solved it Ho, no, when it comes to collecting the glory, I can be elbowed aside like an old glove and have the cup of triumph dashed from my lips. And all because of an acute attack of diarrhoea.’

  ‘Oh, sir!’ moaned MacGregor who was finding it hard coming back to this sort of thing after his three days of freedom. He reached for his universal remedy. ‘Would you like a cigarette, sir?’

  Dover’s eager hand was already out. ‘Thought you were never going to ask!’ he rumbled. ‘Well, go on, laddie! Tell us what happened!’

  ‘Happened, sir?’ Even MacGregor couldn’t believe that Dover didn’t know the whole story already. ‘Didn’t you read about it in the newspapers?’

  ‘What bloody chance have I had to read newspapers?’ demanded Dover reasonably enough. ‘The way I’ve been dashing around . . .’Strewth, I haven’t had my boots off for forty-eight hours and . . .’

  MacGregor decided not to waste any more time. ‘Well, sir, with the arrest of the last Claret Tapper this morning, I think we can say that it’s all over. Everything’s pretty well tied up.’

  ‘Don’t spare me any of the boring details!’ advised Dover unpleasantly. ‘I’ve got to sit here till five o’clock whatever happens.’

  ‘Superintendent Trevelyan and I went to Bristol, sir.’

  ‘Taking every bloody police car with you,’ interrupted Dover, ‘as I know to my cost. Would you believe it took those peasants more than two bloody hours to rustle up some transport for me? If I hadn’t pulled my rank on ’em I’d be silting in that lousy pub yet.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have caught a train, sir? I believe there’s quite a good service from . . .’

  Dover stared at his sergeant as though the young ponce had suddenly sprouted two heads. ‘Trains cost money, you moron! What am I supposed to be doing? Subsidising the bloody taxpayers now?’

  ‘Sorry, sir. I hadn’t thought of that.’ MacGregor swung his chair round and stared out of the window. Perhaps if he didn’t have to look at the old fool. . . ‘Well, when we reached Bristol, sir, we went straight to the Crown Court where the fellow in charge of the records had all the paperwork ready and waiting for us. Superintendent Trevelyan had seen to that.’ MacGregor permitted himself a faint grin at the memory. ‘The superintendent has a very forceful technique on the car radio. He certainly knows how to get things moving. He even got us a motor-cycle escort to take us through the town and . . .’ A little late in the day MacGregor realised that all this enthusiasm for the superintendent must sound to some large and flapping ears like the blackest treachery. He hurried to make amends. ‘We soon found that your deductions were absolutely correct, sir. Gallagher and Whittacker had, indeed, stood trial during the same week and had actually been put up for sentencing on the same day. Just over a year ago. Well, that seemed the obvious place to start and we immediately began to check on all the other people who were around the Crown Court at about that time. As a temporary measure, we decided to ignore people like solicitors and barristers and newspaper reporters and such like, and concentrated on other accused persons and . . .’

  ‘. . . to cut a long story short,’ said Dover, dropping his hint like a ton of bricks.

  ‘We found this group of yobboes, sir,’ said MacGregor with a sigh. They stood out like a handful of sore thumbs. It was all too easy, really. One of them – Freddie Collins – was accused of stealing a car and all the rest of the jokers had rallied round to give him an alibi. I’ve read the reports of the trial since, sir, and Collins was as guilty as hell, if you ask me.’

  ‘But he got off?’

  The jury found him “not guilty”, sir,’ agreed MacGregor. ‘In view of his subsequent activities and those of his companions, I think we can chalk that one up as a gross miscarriage of justice.’

  Dover grunted. ‘Nothing new about that, laddie! Miscarriages of justice? ’Strewth, if I was to tell you how many times I’ve suffered from that sort of thing, you wouldn’t bloody well believe me!’

  ‘No, sir,’ said MacGregor. ‘I don’t suppose I would.’

  Dover had a quick look to see if the cocky little squirt was trying to take the mickey and decided, reluctantly, that perhaps he wasn’t. ‘I do wish you’d get on with it!’ he complained.

  ‘Well, that’s really all there is to it, sir. Superintendent Trevelyan got weaving on
the blower and the local police did a simultaneous swoop and brought in all the people connected with this Freddie Collins case. Once they were questioned in depth, Freddie Collins and his two accomplices stood out so clearly that nobody could have missed them. They’d been so sure of pulling it off, you see, that they hadn’t bothered to concoct a worthwhile story. It’s funny, really, because their planning had been meticulous in almost every other respect.

  Dover was looking puzzled. ‘But they’d got the ransom money,’ he objected. ‘Haifa million nicker! By the time you caught up with ‘em, they’d had it for hours. Why hadn’t they just dropped everything and scarpered? ‘Strewth, if I ever got that much lolly in my hands’ – his eyes misted over at the thought – ‘you wouldn’t see me for bloody dust!’

  ‘Perhaps not, sir,’ said MacGregor, his boredom momentarily making him a little careless, but the Claret Tappers were cleverer than that. They didn’t want to spend the rest of their days in some stinking South American town, waiting for the law to catch up with them. It’s no fun being a fugitive. Their plan was simply to sit tight until all the fuss had died down. Then they were going to move quietly to another part of the country where nobody knew them and only then start spending the money. No, I reckon the Claret Tappers have been pretty clever about most of the things they’ve done.’

  ‘Clever?’ scoffed Dover. ‘What do you mean – clever? I don’t call it clever to go around and get yourself bloody caught!’ He puffed his chest out. ‘They weren’t as clever as me, laddie!’

  ‘I merely meant that they always tried to do the unusual or the unexpected, sir. After all, who would ever have thought of kidnapping a high-ranking detective from Scotland Yard in the first place? You’ve got to admit that was original. Or of letting him go unharmed when they realised that they weren’t going to collect any ransom money for him?’

  ‘Bah, typical commie student stuff!’

  MacGregor shook his head. ‘And that’s another thing, sir. The Claret Tappers aren’t left-wing, neo-Maoist students at all. Collins himself works in a shoe shop and Hamilton is a Gas Board employee. The third chap worked in a factory until he was made redundant and the girl – our “Mary Jones” – is a freelance shorthand-typist. They just wanted everybody to get the impression that they were a bunch of way-out students so as to lay yet another false trail. That’s why they made these rather absurd demands for the release of convicted prisoners and criminal lunatics. And why they sent their messages through the Archbishop of Canterbury and silly things like that.’ MacGregor noticed that Dover’s eyelids were beginning to droop and raised his voice out of sheer spite. ‘And that’s why, sir, they timed their kidnappings to coincide with the university vacations. They kidnapped you at Christmas and the Prime Minister’s grandson at Kaster, if you remember. All in all they spared no effort to send us all haring off in quite the wrong direction.’