‘You do, indeed,’ murmured MacGregor.
‘Cor, listen to him! Here, I hope he doesn’t kill the poor little bleeder.’
‘So’, agreed MacGregor with a shiver, ‘do I.’
In the circumstances this total misinterpretation of what was happening in the interviewing room was understandable. The two sergeants continued to sit patiently in the front office while Dover, behind a solidly locked door, screamed first for help and then for mercy.
In a straight fight Dover would have won hands down, going on the principle that a bad big ’un will beat a bad little ’un any day. But Dover was labouring under two crucial disadvantages: unlike Perking, he wasn’t armed and, also unlike Perking, he wasn’t on his feet and thus able to make full use of his superior height and weight. Had he been left to himself there is no doubt that Dover would have eventually managed to achieve an upright position but the villain Perking, spinning around like a mini-dervish, resolutely refused to leave him alone. With his stout chair leg he incessantly whacked the fallen giant round the head and shoulders, varying his attack with an occasional poke in the stomach from the splintered end of his weapon. Dover cursed and feebly tried to beat off the mosquito-like onslaught.
MacGregor paused in the act of lighting yet another cigarette. ‘Was that the Chief Inspector shouting for help?’ he asked doubtfully.
‘Course not!’ scoffed the station sergeant. ‘What would he be wanting help for? He’s doing all right by himself from the sound of it. Do you feel like a cup of tea?’
MacGregor listened again and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yes, that sounds a good idea. I suppose he’ll ring the bell if he wants us.’
‘Course he will,’ agreed the station sergeant, going to fill the kettle in the gents.
The bell. It was Dover’s last hope of salvation. The only trouble was that he couldn’t reach it. Perking was still thrashing enthusiastically away and stamping as hard as he could on Dover’s hands whenever it looked as though the Chief Inspector was going to drag himself to his feet. If Dover had not been so grossly overweight or if he had not been the most out-of-condition police officer north and south of a line drawn from the Wash to the Bristol Channel, the disgraceful farce might have been ended sooner. As it was, Dover had to wait until John Perking was just too exhausted to hit him any more.
At long last the bell rang.
MacGregor jumped to his feet. ‘Thank God!’ he said with relief. ‘Come on, let’s get ’em out of there! I just hope the stupid old fool hasn’t gone too far this time.’
The two sergeants stared unbelievingly through the open door of the interviewing room.
MacGregor, he of the razor-sharp reactions and the big feet, got the first words out. ‘Quick, fetch a doctor!’
Dover, slumped by the door with two black eyes and blood pouring down his face, groaned. ‘No, you bloody fool!’ he mumbled through swollen lips, so indistinctly that nobody understood him.
Chapter Eight
‘IT’S all your blasted fault!’ insisted Dover viciously. ‘Why the blazes you had to go dragging in that bloody doctor is beyond me. Anybody’d think’, he added, squinting suspiciously out of two unlovely black eyes, ‘that you were deliberately trying to shop me.’
‘Oh, sir!’ protested MacGregor and endeavoured to look as though the thought had never ever crossed his mind.
‘And that damned magistrate,’ Dover grumbled on. ‘Fat old cow! They shouldn’t allow women on the bench, I’ve always said so. No judgment, women. And they don’t know when to keep their traps shut.’
‘Are you ready for your sweet, sir?’
‘What is it?’
‘Apple dumplings, sir.’
‘Well,’ said Dover grudgingly, ‘I’ll try and force a few mouthfuls down.’ He handed over his dirty plate, which looked as though it had received a visitation from a plague of locusts.
MacGregor stacked it tidily on the tray on the dressing-table and ladled out a massive helping of apple dumpling. ‘Is that enough, sir?’
Dover scowled at it. ‘It’ll do for a start.’
Nearly two whole days had passed since the incident in the interviewing room and Dover was now beginning to sit up and take notice. Sustenance he had been partaking of all along as, luckily, his appetite had not been impaired. He shovelled down the apple dumpling but he was not in the sunniest of moods.
‘ “Why has the accused got that piece of sticking plaster on his cheek?” ’ he piped, imitating, as MacGregor (who had been through this sixteen times already) knew only too well, the female magistrate. ‘Silly cow! It’s a pity they didn’t let me get a word in. I’d have told her a few home truths instead of yes-your-worshipping and no-your-worshipping all over the damned place.’
In the magistrates’ court itself Dover had had to play a nonspeaking role. It was Inspector Mansion who had risen, rather unwillingly, to his feet and explained to the Bench that the prisoner had attacked a police officer during questioning and had had to be restrained. ‘Only’, said Inspector Mansion, ‘a reasonable amount of force was used.’
The Bench, led by the female magistrate, was sceptical.
A heavily bandaged Dover was produced as evidence.
The female magistrate was scathing. Did the police really expect them to believe that a great hulking brute like Dover had been assaulted and beaten up by the weak and tiny prisoner? The idea was ludicrous! She would like to remind Inspector Mansion that she had been sitting on this Bench, woman and girl, for thirty-five years and she was well aware that thick bandages and sticking plaster on policemen more often concealed disgraceful breaches of the Judges’ Rules than genuine injuries. She was, she was sure, speaking for her brother magistrates when she warned that such flagrant examples of police brutality would not be tolerated in Pott Winckle, that well-known cradle of civil liberty. The police had been warned and had
