Surveillance here was going to be more difficult than Dover had at first imagined, though he had recognized immediately that this was a job for the girls, hence his urgent summoning of all the policewomen in the county. He envisaged an elaborate roster system whereby every time a lady came out of the vital centre lavatory, a policewoman would immediately nip in and check whether the ransom money was still there. He could see the snags in this plan as well as anybody. It meant that every customer who used the middle lavatory would have to be followed by another policewoman until her colleague indicated that the money had not yet been taken. But, how was the first policewoman to let the second policewoman know? After all, the second policewoman and her suspect might be half-way across the Market Square while the first policewoman was looking in the Vim tin to see if the five hundred pounds was still there. Well, there’d have to be a third policewoman acting as runner and . . . Oh, well, they could work out the details later.
Now it was later and tricky little points of procedure paled into insignificance as Dover balefully eyed his women colleagues. There were only two of them.
‘Where are the others?’ he screamed in fury.
‘That’s all we’ve got,’ said the local inspector. ‘I tried to tell you, sir. Recruiting’s very bad at the moment.’
‘Obviously!’ snarled Dover, and raised his eyes eloquently to the unkind heavens.
Woman Police Sergeant Joan Kempton and Woman Police Constable Miriam Alice Smith waited patiently for Scotland Yard’s master mind to give them their instructions. Woman Police Sergeant Kempton was an alert, bird-like young woman with a mass of flaming red hair. Miriam Alice Smith stood six feet one inch in her uniform shoes and had a pair of shoulders on her which many a heavyweight boxer would have been glad to own. Both were well-known figures in the town and not perhaps ideally suited for the inconspicuous role in which Dover had cast them.
Grimly the chief inspector explained the problem to them.
‘Now, Sergeant,’ he concluded, pushing the burden on to the weaker sex without a qualm, ‘how do you propose to tackle it?’
Sergeant Kempton rose to the situation like a true-born Englishwoman. ‘Quite simply, sir,’ she replied firmly, ‘it can’t be done.’
‘God damn and blast it!’ stormed Dover. ‘It’s got to be done !’
‘All right! You tell us how, sir, and we’ll do it.’ Sergeant Kempton tossed her ginger head, folded her arms and waited. Dover could cheerfully have wrung her neck.
‘Well, what about this?’ he suggested through clenched teeth. ‘One of you waits by the entrance and whenever a woman comes out of the middle toilet you engage her in conversation while the other goes into the toilet and checks if the money’s still there?’
Sergeant Kempton laughed, shortly and with contempt.
Dover bridled. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ he snarled viciously.
‘Just about everything,’ said Sergeant Kempton airily. ‘I thought we were supposed to be inconspicuous. What with one of us making polite conversation with every third woman who uses the place and the other popping in and out of the middle lavatory every thirty seconds like a jack-in-the-box, we’re likely to be the talk of the town before lunch-time. What are we supposed to talk to ’em about? The weather or the international situation or what? And do you know what that place is like on market-day? It’s like Waterloo Station on a bank holiday! There’s a queue there nearly all day long. How do you think I can keep popping inconspicuously into the middle lavatory every second turn? Talk about queue-breaking — they’d lynch me!’
Miriam spoke up for the first time. ‘Who’s going to pay for the pennies?’ she asked.
‘That’s a good point, Smith.’ The sergeant nodded her head in approval. ‘This lark’s going to cost a fortune. Who is going to pay?’
‘Police funds,’ snapped Dover.
‘Well,’ said Sergeant Kempton gazing boredly at the ceiling, ‘it still won’t work.’
‘How about putting one of the side toilets out of order?’ Dover tried again with a new inspiration. ‘Then you could stand in there and peep over the top of the partition?’
‘No thank you,’ snorted Sergeant Kempton. ‘What do you think we are? Anyhow,’ she added, ‘the side walls go right up to the ceiling, so that wouldn’t work either.’
‘You’re a bloody fine help, I must say!’ yelped Dover, fast reaching his breaking-point.
‘Here! Don’t you speak to me like that!’ The sergeant was reaching her breaking-point too. ‘I’ve got my rights, you know!’
‘Well, I shouldn’t count on having ’em much longer, if I were you!’
At this point the briefing degenerated into an exchange of vulgar abuse in which Sergeant Kemp ton and Chief Inspector Dover both gave as good as they got. Dover threatened disciplinary action and Sergeant Kempton countered by promising a formal complaint to Higher Authority. The problems of supervising the Market Square ladies’ convenience in order to thwart the dastardly designs of the kidnappers were rapidly abandoned for more acceptable and fruitful topics such as personal appearance, probable moral and intellectual standards, family background and so forth – on all of which the two protagonists waxed long and eloquent.
When
