‘It all fits!’ he concluded triumphantly. ‘The uncarpeted stairs and hall! The continual pop music! The brown speckled tiles in the bog! And,’ – he turned with a merry laugh to a stony-faced Dover – “I shan’t be charging you more than a double scotch in the Dog and Duck, sir, if I’m right!’
Dover pronounced his considered verdict on Inspector Horton as they all fought their way out of the back of the car. Finding himself at one stage with his mouth close to MacGregor’s ear, Dover hissed virulently, ‘Get rid of him!’
‘Sir?’
‘You heard, laddie!’ Dover made the supreme effort and staggered out on to the pavement. The gardening ladies of Flamborough Close rose expectantly on tip-toe and a coven of uniformed police constables, disciplined to the nth degree, stoically didn’t exchange meaningful glances.
Inspector Horton, blissfully unaware of the black hatred he had aroused in Dover’s ample bosom, proudly led the way, pointing out the sights as he went. Dover stumped along in his wake and MacGregor, as usual, brought up the rear.
They went up the garden path, through the front door and into the hall.
‘Well, chief inspector?’
Dover hunched his shoulders. ‘Might be.’
‘I believe you were held in a room on the first floor, sir?’ Inspector Horton mounted the stairs. The paint on the bannisters was scratched and chipped while the wall opposite was daubed with obscenities in red paint. ‘Animals!’ sniffed Inspector Horton before turning again to Dover. ‘Any bells ringing yet, sir?’
‘Not a bloody tinkle.’
‘The chief inspector was blindfolded when he was brought in and out of the house,’ MacGregor put in tactfully. ‘Perhaps we’ll have better luck upstairs.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Inspector Horton. He was beginning to feel rather anxious. He’d gone completely overboard on the theory that ‘Osborne’ was indeed the kidnappers’ lair and had, on his own initiative, mounted a full-scale operation. Detectives had examined every square inch of the house and a team of forensic experts were still hard at it, collecting fingerprints, stains, dust, shreds of material, cigarette ash and anything else that took their fancy. Skilled personnel in the laboratory had been alerted and were already on standby and, probably, overtime. The expenditure of taxpayers’ money and valuable police mail-hours was already verging on the astronomic. A cold hand clutched at Inspector Horton’s vitals! If he’d gone and got the wrong sodding house . . . He pulled himself together and brought the full force of his personality to bear on Dover again. ‘Er – the info from the Yard wasn’t actually crystal clear, sir, as to which particular upstairs room you were imprisoned in. Of course I’ve got my lads going over them all with a tine tooth comb, but it would help if we knew which one we ought to be concentrating on.’
MacGregor gave Dover a heave up the last step. ‘Wouldn’t it be better, Inspector Horton,’ he asked as tactfully as he could, ‘if we concentrated on clues leading to the kidnappers and their presence in the house rather than Mr Dover’s sojourn there?’
‘Ah! Yes. Er – quite.’ Inspector Horton was unaware that the detail about Dover being locked in the lavatory had been placed on the Secret List by the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police himself. That eminent personage had reasoned that there were enough silly jokes about coppers without providing free ammunition for more.
The emergence of a tall, thin man in civilian clothes from one of the bedrooms mercifully turned the conversation into less sensitive channels. ‘Just the chappie I was looking for!’ he exclaimed as Inspector Horton made the introductions. He peered closely at Dover’s shoulders. ‘Yes,’ he repeated happily, ‘just the chappie! Now, if you’ll just let me take a sample we can settle this business once and for all.’
‘A sample of what?’ demanded Dover with understandable apprehension.
‘Of your dandruff, my dear fellow!’ said the tall, thin man, raising his predatory hands and revealing the scalpel and glass slide that he was carrying. ‘I saw you from the window when you arrived,’ he explained. ‘Even from that distance I knew you were my man, eh?’ He began to scrape some of the deposit off the shoulders of Dover’s overcoat. The shocked silence which seemed to be greeting his remarks appeared to bother him. ‘Well, it could have belonged to one of the kidnappers, couldn’t it?’
‘Just what I was about to say,’ said Inspector Horton.
The tall, thin man was proudly showing his slide to MacGregor. ‘Like guano, isn’t it?’ He produced another glass slide from his pocket and clamped it firmly over the first before continuing. ‘I found quite a rich deposit of scurf on the floor of the lavatory. You can practically wade ankle-deep through the stuff! What puzzles me, though, is that we didn’t find it in any of the other rooms. After all,’ – he chuckled deprecatingly, as he put his slides away in his pocket – ‘the chief inspector can have spent only a comparatively small proportion of his time in the loo.’
‘Maybe the
