Dover Beats the Band Page 4

  ‘Ah,5 said MacGregor, catching on at last, ‘you mean whisky, sir?’

  It was three o’clock in the afternoon.

  Captain Maguire’s face darkened. ‘You’re not a tee-totaller, are you?’ he asked in tones so menacing that the Doberman bared his teeth again.

  ‘I’m not!’ said Dover, anxious that the interview shouldn’t get off on the wrong foot. ‘And I take it straight!’

  ‘Good man!’ Captain Maguire slopped a generous ration of the amber liquid into a half-pint tankard. ‘You’re a chappie after my own heart! But what about Little Lord Fauntleroy here? We can’t leave him out in the cold. Would he prefer a drop of the old ruin?’

  Dover was already expanding like a flower in the sheer warmth of Captain Maguire’s welcome. At least this fellow kept a drop of decent booze. ‘Oh, forget him!’ he advised. ‘He’s still wet behind the ears.’

  ‘He’s got to learn to hold his liquor, my old darling,’ said Captain Maguire, eyeing MacGregor dubiously. ‘There’s no room at the top these days for a laddie who can’t keep a clear head when all about are losing theirs.’

  Dover sank to hitherto unexplored depths of disloyalty. ‘He’ll go puking all over your office,’ he warned, getting bored with the discussion. ‘He doesn’t drink anything stronger than tea. Besides,’ – he passed his glass back over the desk for a refill – ‘he’s got to take notes.’

  Captan Maguire filled up Dover’s tankard and his own. ‘Oh, one of your pen-pushing brigade, is he? Say no more! I know the breed. Well,’ – he paused to dry off his moustache – ‘let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Sir Bert gave me a tinkle but the poor old sod wasn’t at his most coherent. Bends the old elbow a bit, you know. Still, none of us is perfect.’

  Sycophantly Dover agreed and unbuttoned his overcoat. It was getting very hot in the office. ‘They found this dead man, you see,’ he explained. ‘On that rubbish dump. Couple of days ago.’

  ‘I read about it. What a way to pass through the pearly gates, eh?’

  ‘When they slit him open, they found this blue bead thing inside.’ Dover snapped his flabby fingers and MacGregor obediently produced what could, with a modicum of luck, be the chief exhibit in a murder trial and gave it to Captain Maguire.

  ‘Yes, it’s one of ours,’ declared Captain Maguire when he’d managed to get both eyes focussed on the target at the same time. ‘It’s a Giggle.’

  MacGregor, who was indeed taking notes, looked up. He was rather shocked at such levity. Captain Maguire was, after all, wearing a Brigade of Guards tie.

  ‘And so worth twenty-five Titters,’ Captan Maguire went on with a grin. ‘Twenty-five Titters,’ he chanted, ‘equals one Giggle. Five Giggles equals one Snigger. Ten Sniggers equals one Guffaw.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you, sir.’

  ‘Actually, sonnie boy, that’s the idea. For you not to understand it, I mean.’ Captain Maguire got a small cigar box out of one of the desk drawers and tipped the contents out with a careless hand. Blue, yellow, green and red beads went skittering in all directions. ‘The token things we use instead of the genuine spondulicks,’ he explaind. ‘I thought Sir Bert was supposed to have briefed you up in the old Metropolis.’

  ‘I hadn’t appreciated it was quite so elaborate, sir.’

  ‘Got to be, old son.’ Captain Maguire made several genuine but unsuccessful efforts to pick the Funny Money up and put it back in the cigar box. ‘Otherwise even the stupid buggers we get here would twig what was going on. As it is, most of ’em go their entire bleeding holiday without ever working it out that our ice creams cost two and a half times as much as they do outside. Still,’ – he leaned back and groped around in a cupboard for a fresh bottle – ‘it gives the poor sods something to think about, doesn’t it? Takes their minds off the weather and the plumbing.’

  ‘Don’t the holiday-makers complain, sir?’

  ‘Of course they complain, boyo! They complain endlessly. About everything.’ Captain Maguire dropped the dead man in his waste-paper basket. ‘Mind you, they enjoy it. Like traffic jams and strikes at Heathrow. It brings a touch of glamour into their grotty lives. Of course,’ – he tossed the top off the new bottle in the general direction of his ashtray – ‘occasionally one of the more persistent and bloody-minded bleeders goes too far and actually manages to penetrate right in here. Well, they get precious little change out of me! The last bolshie-type bastard who had the damned gall to raise his voice in my office got the toe of my boot up his backside before I set the dog on him.’

  ‘Good heavens!’ said MacGregor.

  ‘Threatening to sue,’ added Captain Maguire proudly. ‘Nineteenth this year. All talk, though.’

  Captain Maguire was so clearly a man after Dover’s own heart that the chief inspector felt he wanted to do something to show his appreciation. He addressed MacGregor in an unaccustomed burst of generosity. ‘Show him the picture!’

  ‘Are you sure, sir?’

  ‘Course I’m sure!’ snapped Dover, irritated that his munificence should thus be questioned. ‘You want the joker identified, don’t you?’

  MacGregor got the photograph which had been taken of the dead man out of his wallet and reluctantly passed it over.

  ‘Christ Almighty!’ exclaimed Captain Maguire blinking.

  Dover leaned forward. ‘Do you recognise him?’

  ‘His own mother wouldn’t! What the devil’s happened to him?’

  ‘He was burnt, sir, and of course his teeth have been removed.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Captain Maguire handed the photograph back and restored his shattered nerves in the only way he knew how. ‘Not that it makes much odds,’ he said as his second mouthful hit the spot. ‘I never look at their faces. They’re all just bundles of pound notes to me, and I’ve every intention of keeping it that way. God, you’d go round the bend if you started thinking of a smelly shower like that as human beings.’

  Dover deposited his empty tankard with a thump on the desk. ‘It doesn’t have to be a holiday-maker,’ he pointed out with unusual perspicacity. ‘It could be somebody on the staff.’

  ‘I’d still need a recognisable face, old son.’.

  ‘A middle-aged man, sir,’ prompted MacGregor. ‘False teeth. Darkish hair. About five foot eight. A bit overweight.’

  Captain Maguire shook his head. ‘It could be anybody.’

  ‘Think!’ urged Dover, almost as if he cared. ‘Has anybody gone missing recently? Round about a couple of months or so ago? Cleared off without giving notice or saying anything?’ Captain Maguire shrugged his shoulders. ‘They’re always doing that,’ he objected. ‘Idle lot of buggers! Talk about here today and gone tomorrow. I can’t think of anybody who’d fit the bill, word of honour. Actually, we don’t employ all that many men, you know. The cleaners are all women, and most of the catering staff. Girls in the office, too.’

  ‘All right, the holiday-makers, then! Anybody leaving in suspicious circumstances there? Like without paying their bloody bill?’

  Captain Maguire looked at Dover as though unable to believe his ears. No wonder civilisation as we know it was crumbling if coppers were as dim as this! ‘You must be joking, old man!’ he said. ‘Look, you don’t think somebody who’s as fly as old Sir Bert is going to let sodding little clerks and factory hands welsh on him, do you? For God’s sake! They have to pay for everything in advance, my old china! Cash on the nail or ten working days if they offer one of their grotty little cheques. After that, who cares? The buggers are on their own. If they don’t want to stick it out to the bitter end, that’s their affair. All a premature departure means to Rankin’s bleeding Holiday Ranches is a fraction more profit. Christ, one of the great unwashed goes missing and you reckon I call out the watch? No way, old son! The only time we take any action is if they depart with any of our furniture and fittings which, if you’ve seen the way our so-called bunk houses are equipped, is not a frequent occurrence.’

  MacGregor was still reluctant to throw
in the towel. ‘Are you sure you can’t help us, sir?’

  ‘Frightfully sorry, old chap. But hasn’t your stiff got any family or chums? Why hasn’t his wife reported him missing?’

  ‘She probably croaked him,’ said Dover who believed that murder and matrimony were just two sides of the same coin.

  MacGregor sighed. ‘Then we shall just have to mount a full-scale, nation-wide enquiry, I’m afraid. I shall want the names and addresses, sir, of all the people who’ve been here on holiday since Easter, and of all your employees for the same period.’

  ‘Hell’s steaming teeth!’ exclaimed Captain Maguire. His secretary wasn’t going to take kindly to this, paperwork not being her strong point nor, indeed, what she’d been hired for. ‘It’ll take years! Can’t you narrow it down a bit?’

  ‘I suppose we could ignore anybody who’s only been here in the last month,’ said MacGregor, not too enthusiastically. ‘The chap’s been dead at least that long.’

  ‘But, if you’ve got the date of death, couldn’t you manage with people who were here round about that time?’

  Unfortunately MacGregor was one of those people who believe in doing a job well. It was a philosophy to which Dover also subscribed, with the proviso that it was somebody else who did the work.

  ‘I’m afraid, sir,’ said MacGregor, ‘that would be making too big an assumption. The time the blue bead w(as acquired may have no connection at all with the time of death. However, we’ll start with the people who were staying here round about that period. We may strike lucky and not have to bother with the rest.

  Captan Maguire still wasn’t very happy. Damn it all, it was only last week that Doris had been yowling on that she couldn’t be at it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. ‘It’s going to put my staff to one hell of a lot of trouble, sergeant.’

  MacGregor sighed. Captain Maguire seemed to be making a great deal of fuss about nothing but, since the police were always being urged to be nice to the general public . . . He leafed back through the pages of his notebook. He couldn’t agree to any skimping that would jeopardise the investigation but he’d got this idea at the back of his mind that there was something somewhere which might economise on the amount of time and . . .

  ‘Venison,’ said Dover, his devotion to things comestible finally paying off.

  MacGregor could have spat.

  ‘Venison?’ Captain Maguire’s face brightened. ‘Why the hell didn’t you say that before?’

  ‘I was just about to, sir,’ said MacGregor, going pink with mortification. Well, it was true. Another second or so and he would have remembered all about the . . . Oh, it was sickening, it really was! If there was one thing worse than having Dover sitting around all day on his back-side doing damn-all, it was having the disgusting old fool opening his stupid trap and sticking his oar in. ‘The post mortem revealed that the dead man had eaten some venison shortly before he was killed,’ MacGregor went on hurriedly, trying to regain control of the interview. ‘Does that help?’

  ‘I’ll say!’ Captan Maguire plunged into action with typical military dash and vigour. ‘Doris!’ he bawled. ‘Dig out that bill from Cooper’s for that venison they flogged us, there’s a good girl! Some time in October, I think. Bring it round when you’ve found it, eh? We’ll be in the bar.’ He snatched up the heavy riding crop without which he never ventured outside his office and looked across at Dover. ‘Come on, old dear!’ he urged hospitably. ‘Show a leg there! We’re wasting good drinking time.’

  Five

  Captain Maguire settled himself down at one end of the bar in the Keir Hardie Saloon as though he’d been drinking there for years, which he had. It was not at all clear why he had bothered to move out of his office. He can’t have been compelled by financial considerations as he chalked up his alcoholic consumption to his employers wherever it took place. It can hardly have been the desire for convivial company either as the only other occupants of the saloon were a depressed-looking couple who’d arrived for a Weeke of Mediaevale Feastinge. No, the truth was that Captain Maguire was something of a law unto himself – and Dover for one wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  ‘Lucky you mentioned that venison, old chap,’ Captain Maguire said as he watched Dover hoist seventeen and a quarter stone of over-indulgence onto a bar stool. ‘It’s going to save a hell of a lot of trouble. And I do mean terrouble!’

  Dover’s interest was temporarily occupied by watching the barman deposit, without a word being spoken by anybody, a row of doubles in front of his latest customers. ‘Ah,’ said Dover vaguely and then, although completely unpractised in the art, caught the barman’s eye. ‘Bring Sunny Jim, here, a tomato juice!’ he ordered grandly, and helped himself quickly to his sergeant’s whisky.

  MacGregor cringed and prayed without success that the floor would open and swallow him.

  Meanwhile Captain Maguire, having lubricated his own larynx with the vin du pays of Bonnie Scotland, was continuing with the conversation. ‘If it had been sheep’s brains,’ he averred, his enunciation only slightly slurred, ‘or tripe and onions, we’d have been right up the creek. We dish them out every other day, but – venison – that was a one-off job. Old Cooper offered me a few pounds at a very reasonable rate. Well, it was either that or have the stuff go rotten on him. We only just caught it in time. Next day even Attila turned his nose up at it.’ A faint alarm bell came tinkling through the swirling mists of booze. ‘I say,’ he whispered hoarsely, ‘this joker of yours – he didn’t die of food poisoning, did he?’

  Dover hastened to reassure his new-found friend. ‘Shtrangled,’ he said, getting his tongue round the word at the third time of asking.

  ‘Good-oh!’ Captain Maguire summoned up another round of the same in celebration. ‘Well, like I said, we served this venison stuff one Saturday lunch. Pearls before swine, old man! You should have heard ’em. Still, they ate it in the end, it being that or nothing. I don’t know what they were whining about. It looked palatable enough to me. Anyhow, I never repeated the experiment. I get enough aggro in this job without going round manufacturing it.’

  Since Dover appeared unwilling to pursue the matter further, MacGregor fastidiously dabbed a trace of tomato juice off his upper lip and took up the questioning. ‘So, what you’re saying, sir, is that on one specific Saturday this season, you served venison. To your staff and the holiday-makers?’

  Captain Maguire was much amused. ‘Catch my staff eating that muck!’

  ‘Then, whoever ate the venison would be a holiday-maker?’

  ‘I should think so. I reckon we had that venison about a couple of months ago. Does that fit in with the time your chap cashed his chips? Still, as soon as Doris gets here with the files we’ll be able to sort out all the details.’

  MacGregor began to feel they were making progress at last. ‘And you’ll be able to let me have a list of the holiday-makers who were staying here at the time, sir?’

  ‘Nothing simpler!’ Captain Maguire raised an eyebrow and, twenty yards away, the barman reached for the whisky bottle. ‘Actually, from what I remember, most of the paying customers were old-age pensioners that weekend. Special out-of-season rates.’

  MacGregor shook his head. ‘Our chap wasn’t an old-age pensioner, sir. Far too young.’

  ‘Oh, there’d be a few others here as well, I expect,’ said Captain Maguire indifferently. He unscrewed the empty glass from Dover’s hand and replaced it with a full one. ‘Dirty weekenders, if nothing else.’

  As has already been hinted, Doris as an employee was more accommodating than efficient, and by the time she finally arrived in the Keir Hardie Saloon with a sufficiency of books and documents, MacGregor was the only one capable of taking much interest. He ordered the girl a cherry brandy on the house and settled down to sort through the dog-eared pile she’d dumped disconsolately on the bar counter.

  Captain Maguire, the back still ramrod though the eye was glassy, had been trying to induce a paralytic Dover to join him in some
bawdy, tap-room ditty, the tempo of which he was thrashing out with his riding crop. When Doris appeared, however, he promptly let Dover sag back into his amorphism and gave all the attention of which he was capable to the girl.

  The thing took some sorting out but, in the end, MacGregor flattered himself that he’d more or less got the picture. On the weekend that there’d been venison on the menu, the Bowerville-by-the-sea Holiday Ranch must have been nine-tenths empty. According to MacGregor’s researches there were only two groups in residence and no individual holiday-makers at all.

  Of the two group bookings, MacGregor felt that he could dispense with the Golden Lads and Lassies Sodality from Wootle. They were a party of senior citizens – thirty-seven ladies and three men – who had spent ten fun-filled days at Bowerville-by-the-sea. In addition to the pensioners themselves, there had been a couple of volunteer female handlers and the coach driver. The coach driver was a possibility as the dead man at Muncaster, but MacGregor didn’t really fancy him. The Golden Lads and Lassies had presumably returned without difficulty to Wootle and MacGregor felt certain that even they would have noticed if their driver had gone missing.

  The other lot looked more promising. This was an organisation called the Dockwra Society, with headed notepaper to prove it. Through their Honorary Secretary they had booked four adjacent chalets (or bunk-houses as they were known at Rankin’s) which had provided them with accommodation for seven people in single rooms plus an extra room in which they could have their meetings.

  MacGregor turned to Captain Maguire for enlightenment.

  ‘Ah,’ said Captain Maguire, removing only his eyes from the fair Doris. ‘Four bunk-houses, eh?’

  ‘You remember?’

  ‘No.’

  MacGregor, who had picked up more of Dover’s methods of interrogation than he would have cared to admit, gave Captain Maguire quite a rough shake. ‘It says in the file,’ he insisted, ‘that they were situated in Shinwell Square.’