‘I just came upstairs to wake you, sir.’
‘Wasn’t asleep!’ snapped Dover, just to keep the record straight.
‘The Assistant Commissioner’s helicopter’s already landed, sir. He should be here in about ten minutes.’
‘’Strewth!’ Dover rushed over to the wash-basin and freshened up by rinsing his false teeth under the cold water tap. ‘Here, wath abouth my lunth?’
‘The Assistant Commissioner wants everybody to attend a working luncheon, sir.’
‘A working luncheon?’ echoed Dover miserably as he munched his dentures back into place. ‘Don’t they know what that sort of thing does to my digestion. ’Strewth, I’ll have the bloody cramps for a week. Here,’ – his eye alighted on the piece of paper that MacGregor had thrown away in disgust – ‘what’s happened to my notes?’
‘Your notes, sir?’ MacGregor retrieved the paper and flattened it out. ‘I’m sorry. I thought it was just scrap paper.’
‘Ho, did you?’ Dover could tell when somebody was being sarcastic and he didn’t like it. ‘It may interest you to know, laddie, that I’ve all but solved this bloody case.’
Of course Dover hadn’t solved the case and MacGregor knew he hadn’t. And Dover knew that MacGregor knew he hadn’t. Which knowledge merely drove the chief inspector to more and more extravagant claims backed up by wild talk about the paucity of the loose ends that still needed to be tied up.
MacGregor remained sceptical. ‘I suppose you’re talking about the three B’s again, sir,’ he said patronisingly.
Dover was indignant. ‘Paul Pry!’
‘Bristol, Bath and Badminton!’ MacGregor chuckled indulgently. ‘I don’t quite see how they’re going to solve all our problems, sir. What’s significant about them, may one ask? Apart from the fact that they all begin with the same letter, of course.’
‘You’ll laugh on the other side of your silly face,’ snarled Dover, every chin quivering with indignation, ‘when those towns turn out to be the key to this whole bloody business!’ He was standing in front of the dressing-table mirror, smartening himself up for his encounter with the Assistant Commissioner.
MacGregor, for whom elegance was almost a religion, watched Dover trying to flatten his hair out with spit and picking the flakes of dandruff out of his unfashionable, Adolf Hitler-style moustache. How could you believe a single word uttered by such a slovenly buffoon?
‘Yes,’ continued Dover, gilding his non-existent lily with gusto, ‘you and that clever bugger, Trevelyan, are in for a bit of an eve-opener. And a few others I could mention!’
A faint frown creased MacGregor’s handsome brow. All bluff, of course. Dover wasn’t capable of solving a problem to which he’d already been given the answer. All this childish bragging was pathetic, really.
Wasn’t it?
MacGregor’s frown deepened as he recalled that there had been occasions, albeit few and far between, when Dover had been right. It was an event comparable to monkeys with typewriters producing the Complete Works of William Shakespeare – unlikely but just possible. MacGregor’s mind boggled as he tried once more to be scientific about it and work out the odds against this investigation ending in the usual shameful whimper. He stared hard at Dover who was still primping away in front of the fly-blown looking-glass. The flabby, pasty face was aglow with its usual expression of supreme self-confidence and self-satisfaction so that wasn’t much help, but was there, perhaps, a faint gleam of intelligence in those mean, boot-button eyes?
‘You taken root or something?’ Dover had finished polishing the toes of his boots on the backs of his trousers and was now raring to go. ‘His Nibs’ll be bloody-minded enough without us keeping him waiting.’
MacGregor tore his mind away from Bath, Badminton and Bristol, kidnapped children and threats of mayhem to run a fastidious eye over Dover’s unlovely figure. ‘Your – er – flies are – er – undone, sir.’
Dover’s stomach was rumbling with hunger. ‘Trust you to go making a fuss about nothing!’ He adjusted his clothing with clumsy fingers. ‘There! That suit you?’
‘Really, sir, it’s not a question of suiting . . .’
Dover rumbled over MacGregor’s bleated protest. ‘These bloody zips aren’t a patch on the old buttons. You knew where you were with buttons. They were slower, I grant you, but they were a hell of a lot safer. And things didn’t keep getting caught in ‘em,’ he added obscurely.
But MacGregor wasn’t listening. At long last the light was beginning to dawn. Bristol, Bath and Badminton! Yes! MacGregor slapped himself on the forehead in a gesture of mock reproach which was, nevertheless, more genuine than he cared to admit. Why in the name of heaven hadn’t be seen the connection way back in Dover’s office at the Yard when the three towns had been grouped together for the first time? God knows, it was unlikely to solve the case with one wave of a magic wand but it should give them a more profitable lead than anything else had done so far. It was annoying that Dover should have been the one to stumble on the answer but MacGregor was modest enough to realise that he couldn’t hog all the sagacity in the partnership all the time, In fact, being not only modest but amazingly generous as well, MacGregor was on the point of actually congratulating Dover on his perspicacity when that Grand Old Man of Detection cut short the conversation by opening the door of his bedroom and making his way with all possible speed downstairs towards the trough. The Assistant Commissioner (Crime) would no doubt be presiding over the luncheon table with all the charm of a death’s head at the feast, but Dover reckoned that the man had not yet been born who could put him off his food.
In the event it was MacGregor who ruined everything. Instead of sitting there quietly as befitted his junior status in that August gathering, young Charles Edward had to go opening his trap and diving in with both fiat feet.
The Assistant Commissioner (Crime) was still trying to slap the deafness out of his helicopter-battered ears and had barely had
