Dover and the Claret Tappers Read online

  ‘It’s not been a very fruitful morning so tar, has it, sir?’ said MacGregor, sipping his coffee like a proper little gentleman and trying to shut out the sounds of Dover’s uninhibited mastication.

  ‘Knew it wouldn’t be,’ replied Dover through a mouthful of cheese and pickle sandwich. ‘It was a damned stupid idea in the first place.’

  MacGregor accepted the criticism with his customary meekness. CI think maybe we ought to try at night, sir.’

  Dover’s jaws missed a beat. ‘You can stuff that for a lark!’

  ‘It does make sense though, sir. You see, assuming that the girl is employed here in the Yard, she was obviously on late afternoon or evening duty, wasn’t she? She came into your room about half-past four so she could have been on the normal day shift, but she must have been hanging around till eight to ring you on the phone and then tip off the gang. Now . . .’

  Dover reached for a cornish pasty. ‘She could have rung me up from the north of Scotland,’ he pointed out.

  ‘I don’t think that’s really very likely, sir,’ said MacGregor, dabbing at his lips with a real silk handkerchief. ‘I was wondering if it would be a good idea for me to go along to Personnel and check through the time sheets and things. It must be possible to sort out the women who were supposed to be working here on Tuesday evening. I mean, if we could narrow it down to perhaps a couple of dozen, we could go and have a proper look at them. This way’ – he dismissed two hours’ hard slog with a wave of his hand – ‘does seem a little pointless.’

  ‘Now he tells me!’ grunted Dover.

  After this, the conversation lapsed and the two detectives sat on in the comparative silence of a busy cafeteria. Dover was mopping up the crumbs on his plate with a damp finger when MacGregor gave a chuckle.

  ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘I was just thinking about that young man in the typing pool, sir. Oh, dear! His face when you pointed your finger at him and yelled, “That’s her!”’

  Dover glanced at his sergeant without affection. ‘He should have got his hair cut, shouldn’t he? Puking little pansy! No wonder people are always mistaking these long-haired louts for girls.’

  MacGregor had got a fit of the giggles. He took his silk handkerchief out again and mopped at his eyes. ‘I thought he was going to have a tit, sir! I did, honestly. He went as white as a sheet. And he’d only popped into the typing pool to deliver a box of carbons!’

  With cold calculation Dover proceeded to wipe the smile off MacGregor’s silly face. ‘My girl could have been a man,’ he said. ‘Now I come to think of it. In drag. Some of ’em can look very lifelike when they put their minds to it.’

  The prospect of widening the held of search to include every living soul in the Yard was more than MacGregor could bear ‘You’re not serious, sir?’

  Dover’s mind had grasshopped onto another topic. ‘There can’t be all that many women hanging about here after six in the evening,’ he mused. ‘Clerks and typists don’t work that late and the men go on the switchboard, don’t they?’

  ‘True,’ agreed MacGregor warily – well, you never knew with Dover. ‘Of course, there’d be plenty of policewomen, in and out of uniform, knocking around still. And office cleaners too, probably. I’ll check what time they come on.’

  ‘Canteen stall’.’

  MacGregor stared at Dover in frank amazement. That was the most sensible remark the old buffer had made for years. ‘Certainly canteen stall’, sir! I wonder.’ He looked around. Yes, it must be the hand of God! ‘Can you hang on here for a couple of secs, sir, while I have a word with the manageress? It’s a frightfully long shot, but. . .’

  Dover good-naturedly indicated his complete willingness to go on sitting at his little plastic table until the cows came home, though there was of course a price to be paid. ‘Fetch us another cup of coffee and a doughnut first, laddie!’ he leered.

  The canteen was doing a roaring trade as the ravenous denizens of the law came rampaging in for their mid-morning break. The queue at the counter stretched further than the eye could see and the ladies whose duty and pleasure it was to replenish the dishes and dispense the tea were already beginning to glow with their efforts.

  MacGregor hesitated. It was not, perhaps, the best moment for bearding the canteen’s manageress but he didn’t want to return to Dover empty handed. Screwing up his courage he eventually managed to attract the attention of a harassed looking girl who was endeavouring to equalise supply and demand in the sausage roll department.

  ‘Mrs Fish, dear:’’ The harassed girl licked her lingers in a distraught way before turning to unload another tray.

  ‘If that’s her name!’ shouted MacGregor, trying to project his personality through the intervening barrier of stolid young policemen shuffling down the length of the counter.

  The harassed girl pushed back a lock of greasy hair. ‘In her office, dear! Back of the cash register!’

  Mrs Fish was not best pleased at being disturbed in the middle of her own coffee break but she was the sort of woman who would give a lot of leeway to a handsome face. ‘Well, come in then, lovie, and shut that door, for God’s sake! Ooh’ – she shivered fastidiously and patted the corrugated waves of her pink hair – ‘it’s worse than feeding time at the zoo!’

  MacGregor accepted the seat to which Mrs Fish’s heavily bejewelled and scarlet-tipped hand wafted him and prepared to explain the reason for his intrusion. He had barely got a couple of words out when he was interrupted.

  ‘Coffee, lovie?’

  MacGregor shook his head. ‘I’ve just had a cup, thank you.’

  ‘Not that muck we serve out there?’ Mrs Fish tut-tutted briefly over such foolhardiness and raised her silver coffee pot invitingly. ‘I think you’ll find this rests more easily on the stomach, my dear.’ The dark brown liquid streamed into the bone china. ‘Cream? Sugar? Chocky bickie?’

  When the social niceties were out of the way, MacGregor managed another half sentence before Mrs Fish chipped in again.

  ‘I thought you couldn’t be here about the thieving!’ she proclaimed triumphantly. ‘I couldn’t see even the ninnies who’re supposed to be running this mad-house being daft enough to send a Murder Squad boy round just to look into a bit of lousy thieving.’

  ‘Thieving?’ asked MacGregor, failing to make the mental jumps necessary to follow Mrs Fish’s conversational style.

  ‘That bunch of light-fingered crooks out there, dear,1 explained Mrs Fish with a contemptuous nod in the direction of the canteen. ‘Cheese rolls up their sleeves and Madeira slabs stuffed in their pockets. They’d have whipped all the counter fittings out by now if they hadn’t all been screwed down.’

  MacGregor was bewildered. ‘You don’t mean the policemen?’

  ‘I certainly do mean the policemen!’ Mrs Fish was airing an old grievance. ‘I challenged one of them only the other day. A mere lad, he was, hardly even begun shaving. “Don’t tell me that bulge is your personal radio,” I said, “because I know better!” Looked me straight in the eye, he did, lovie, and . . .

  Mere politeness required MacGregor to listen to all the subsequent exchange of repartee, from which Mrs Fish naturally emerged as victor. A ready wit didn’t, apparently, solve the canteen’s financial problems.

  ‘We’re losing thousands a week,’ said Mrs Fish placidly, paving more attention to the selection of her next chocolate biscuit than to her profit margins. ‘I keep writing to that Commissioner chap of yours but for all the good it does, I might as well save my breath.’ She flashed MacGregor a salacious smile. ‘Still, let’s not you and me waste our time talking about a mob of lousy coppers who’d nick the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.’

  MacGregor sensed that this was probably going to be his last chance of getting a word in edgeways. ‘I wonder it you could give me a list of the canteen staff you had on duty last Tuesday evening. I’m particularly interested in girls who were on the premises from before five o’clock, say, until after eight. You are
open then, aren’t you?’

  ‘We never close,’ said Mrs Fish, getting what mileage she could out of that old joke. ‘Is this about that kidnapping business, dear? Chief Inspector Rover, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Dover,’ said MacGregor. ‘We think he may have been fingered by someone inside the Yard. That’s in the strictest confidence,’ he added quickly.

  “And you think it might be one of my canteen workers?’ MacGregor knew how sensitive people could be. ‘That’s only one of several possibilities,’ he said tactfully. ‘I shall be checking on the clerical staff and the telephonists and even the policewomen. Any young woman who was in the Yard on Tuesday evening is a possible suspect.’

  Mrs Fish rummaged around in a capacious handbag until she found her massive gold powder compact and matching lipstick. ‘Save your energy, lovie,’ she advised, peering at her face in the mirror. ‘It’s Mary Jones you want. I knew’ – she spoke rather indistinctly as she painted a careful crimson band round her mouth – ‘that little bitch was a wrong ’un as soon as I laid eyes on her. Well, I ask you – volunteering for the late afternoon shift? No young girl in her right senses’d do that.’ She paused and examined her maquillage before glancing across at MacGregor. ‘That’s from two to ten, you know. Ruins your whole evening.’

  Taking care not to make a full-scale Palladium spectacular out of it, MacGregor got out his notebook and pencil. Strictly speaking he should at this point have broken off his tête-à-tête with the formidable Mrs Fish and gone to fetch Dover, but it was such a relief to be without the old fool that MacGregor simply hadn’t the heart to do his duty. He squared his conscience by telling himself that Dover didn’t like being bothered with details and he’d be just as happy snoozing out there in the canteen as he would being dragged into Mrs Fish’s sanctum to listen to what might easily turn out to be a wild goose chase. MacGregor could always give him a simple and easily digested resume afterwards if anything worthwhile emerged.

  MacGregor gave Mrs Fish his full attention. ‘You’re basing your accusation on something a little more tangible than a willingness to work unsociable hours, I hope?’

  Mrs Fish slowly raised eyelashes ponderous with mascara. She was an experienced woman of the world and had – God knows! – rubbed shoulders with enough members of the Metropolitan Police to be perfectly au fait with all their nasty little habits. Like putting words into your mouth. ‘I was not aware,’ she said cautiously, ‘as how I had accused anybody of anything.’ It was a sentence strewn with pitfalls for those with uncertain aspirates and Mrs Fish was relieved to have negotiated it safely.

  MacGregor wasn’t bothering about where anybody was sticking their aitches. He realised that he had antagonised Mrs Fish so he dropped his original approach like a hot brick. ‘Tell me about Mary Jones,’ he begged in a wheedling kind of voice.

  ‘Not much to tell you, lovie,’ was Mrs Fish’s still coolish response. She sighed rather heavily and got up to cross the room to where a tiling cabinet stood. She took her time about it and MacGregor was obliged to restrain his impatience.

  ‘She’s been working for me for just over a week,’ Mrs Fish announced grudgingly, snatching off her diamanté-framed spectacles as soon as she’d finished reading. ‘I interviewed her a week last Monday and she started work the next day.’

  MacGregor frowned. ‘That’s a bit quick, isn’t it? I mean, what about references? ‘And don’t these girls have some sort of security check?’

  Mrs Fish glowered back. ‘I can see you’ve never tried to run a police canteen, lovie!’ she said tartly. ‘Girls aren’t lining up to wait hand and foot on you lot, you know. I have to get my staff where and when I can. When a likely looking counter-hand turns up, I can’t afford to hang around for weeks waiting for all this blooming paperwork to be completed. You can’t expect the girl to wait, either.’

  ‘But the rules and regulations, Mrs Fish?’

  Mrs Fish was sorely tempted to tell young Lochinvar where he could stuff his so-and-so rules and regulations, but she remembered in time that their conversation wasn’t being conducted at that level of crudity. ‘All the rules and regulations are being complied with, sergeant. More or less.’

  ‘Oh?’

  Mrs Fish automatically dropped her voice. ‘I’ve got a little private arrangement with ever such a nice old chap in Personnel. I hire the girls, you see, and then we take up the references and do all the security checks afterwards. Do you follow me, dear? Well, when all the paperwork’s finished and everything, all you have to do is put an earlier date on things, isn’t it? That way everybody’s happy.’ She saw from the expression on MacGregor’s face that he wasn’t joining the general elation. ‘I hope you’re not going to start making trouble.’

  MacGregor was something of a stickler for discipline but he decided to turn a blind eye to the peccadilloes of Mrs Fish and her nice old chap in Personnel, for the time being at least. ‘Let’s get back to Miss Mary Jones,’ he said.

  ‘Suits me,’ sniffed Mrs Fish.

  ‘She began work in the canteen a week last Tuesday, volunteering rather unusually for the evening shift. You were about to tell me what else was odd about her.’

  ‘Well, she was never there when you wanted her,’ grumbled Mrs Fish. ‘That I do remember. Always popping off somewhere. I thought she’d got a boy-friend but I can see now that she was really casing the joint.’

  ‘Yes,’ said MacGregor, sparing a tear for the debasement of the English language. ‘There were other things, one imagines, that aroused your suspicions?’

  Mrs Fish’s earrings sparkled as she shook her head. ‘Not really, dear,’ she said. ‘I mean, the girl had obviously never been engaged in the catering trade before but, then, they all lie about previous experience. And she was a cut above the usual type of person we get here – socially, I mean. Most of my girls are – well – rather common, if you’ll excuse the expression.’ Mrs Fish’s smile was patronising, if kindly. ‘Of course, we do occasionally get a more superior type of girl, from a better home background, what’s entering the catering trade at the bottom merely to gain the proper experience.’ She cast her eyes down modestly. ‘I myself began that way.’

  MacGregor stared sullenly at Mrs Fish and closed his notebook. ‘Well, we’ll have a word with her, Mrs Fish. We can’t afford to leave any stone unturned at this stage in our investigations. Meantime’ – he nodded in the direction of the hie which Mrs Fish had been consulting – ‘perhaps you could let me have the names of any other of your assistants who were working in the canteen on Tuesday evening.’

  ‘Mary Jones hasn’t been into work since Wednesday,’ said Mrs Fish. ‘She rang me up mid-day on Thursday to say as how she was in bed with a bad cold.’

  ‘She rang you up?’

  ‘Oh, she tried to kid me it was the warden of this hostel place she was staying in, but I recognised her voice. They’re always trying to pull that trick on me when they want a couple of days off.’

  MacGregor opened his notebook. ‘Have I got this straight? She was at work on Tuesday evening, the night Chief Inspector Dover was kidnapped, and on the next day, Wednesday. Then, on Thursday, she rang up to say that she wasn’t coming in because she was ill.’

  ‘That’s right, my darling!’ Mrs Fish sat back. ‘And since then – neither hide nor hair of her.’

  ‘She’s cleared off all together?’

  ‘Looks like it. It’s all happened before, you know. Sometimes they write later asking for their cards and sometimes they don’t.’

  MacGregor chewed the end of his pencil. It sounded a bit thin but it was all he had got. ‘Mary Jones lives in a hostel? Have you got the address?’

  Mrs Fish reached for her rile. ‘She gave us the names and addresses of two character references,’ she said. ‘I expect they’re as phoney as I don’t know what, but you can have ’em if you want ’em.’

  ‘Might as well,’ said MacGregor with a sigh. ‘And then I must be getting back to my boss.’ He laughed awkwardly. ‘He
gets a mite tetchy if he’s left alone too long.’

  Mrs Fish didn’t mingle any more than was absolutely necessary with the rest of New Scotland Yard, but even she knew all about Detective Chief Inspector Dover. She had gone off MacGregor during the course of their interview but she still had some vestige of affection left for him. She handed him the file. ‘Here,’ she said with warm hearted generosity, ‘you can let me have it back later. It’ll save you a bit of time now.’

  Eight

  ‘IT’S ALL GO,’ COMPLAINED DOVER, GRABBING HOLD of MacGregor as the taxi took a corner on two wheels. ‘Where the hell are we supposed to be off to now?’

  MacGregor braced himself, both in order to counteract the next onslaught of centrifugal force and to overcome the sheer, mind-blowing irritation of having to tell Dover everything three times. Of course, he reminded himself in a sporting effort to take a balanced view, the old fool had been more than half asleep during the first recital. ‘The Dame Letitia Egglestone Hostel for Single Girls in London, sir.’

  ‘What is?’ Dover was staring anxiously out of the window. ‘Here, tell the driver to pull up at the next gents’. ’Strewth, those bloody curried eggs! I knew they’d do for me.’

  ‘I did suggest that we shouldn’t stay for lunch in the canteen, sir,’ murmured MacGregor as he leaned forward to convey Dover’s request to the driver.

  ‘The trouble with you, laddie, is that you can’t see further than the end of your nose!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Where’s the point in hurrying? If we cleared up my kidnapping tomorrow and got that bunch of murderous thugs under lock and key, we’d not get any thanks for it. All that’d happen is that old Brockhurst’d shove us straight off on another job up in the flipping Outer Hebrides or somewhere. No,’ – Dover began to heave himself up as the taxi pulled into the kerb – ‘better the devil you know is what I say. So let’s not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, eh? Softee, softee, catchee monkey! Get it? And open the door for me, can’t you?’