Dover scowled. ‘How high?’
‘Would you believe the Home Secretary?’
‘No!’
Dan, Dan, the Photofit man went on unpacking his goodies. He grinned cheerfully. ‘How about Commander Brockhurst, then? Seems somebody sent him a report, which he read, about eyewitnesses.’
Dover was squeezing his way back to his chair but he spared a snarl for MacGregor en passant. ‘You bloody idiot!’
Dan laid one of his Photofit pictures on the desk in front of Dover. ‘Remind you of anyone?’
Dover nodded. ‘The Queen Mum,’ he said without hesitation.
‘And this one?’
Dover groped for the name. ‘That Goldilocks woman! You know, she was prime minister of somewhere.’
‘Mrs Golda Meir,’ said MacGregor, who would probably have shot himself if he’d had a memory as bad as Dover’s.
Dan pulled out another picture. ‘What about her?’
There was no holding Dover, now that he’d entered into the spirit of the thing. ‘General de Gaulle!’
‘And the last?’
Dover had been going to say Greta Garbo whatever the sketch looked like and he saw no reason for changing his mind.
Dan began to pick his pictures up. ‘I should have stuck it out at the Slade,’ he remarked to nobody in particular, ‘and become a second Michelangelo.’
‘What’s up?’ asked Dover and added, although he was not much of a one for giving his colleagues a pat on the back. ‘I mean, you could see who they were meant to be.’
‘They were meant to be your lady Claret Tapper – Mary Jones,’ said Dan without rancour. ‘As seen through the eyes of Mrs Fish and the most intelligent looking of her tea-ladies, together with Mesdemoiselles Tootle and Montmorency from Dame Letty’s. ‘I’ve wasted,’ he added glumly, ‘the best part of a day on that rubbish.’
‘Well, you’ve got it all bloody wrong!’ snorted Dover. ‘None of ’em look a bit like her!’
‘That’s why,’ said Dan, pulling his box of tricks closer, ‘I’ve come to you, chief inspector. As I always say – there’s nothing like a trained observer!’
MacGregor got out while the going was good. Dover, eager to play with his new toy, was quite happy for once to let him go.
It was an hour before the sergeant popped back to see how things were getting on. He found the office thick with tobacco smoke and Dover and Dan confronting each other across the desk like a couple of cock-robins engaged in a bitter boundary dispute. Photofit transparencies were scattered in irredeemable disarray round the room and both men seemed to be trying to gain possession of the same sheet.
‘But that’s not a Roman nose!’ screamed Dan, whose earlier sang-froid had melted.
‘It’s what I call a Roman nose!’ howled Dover. ‘Why don’t you concentrate on the bloody pimples? You’ve still not got ‘em right.’
‘Pimples?’ wailed Dan, clutching his head in despair. ‘You said “dimples” last time!’
‘It’s the same thing!’ snapped Dover. ‘Look, push off and let me get on with it in my own way!’
Dan laughed bitterly. ‘Get on with it?’ He picked up the torn and scattered result of their joint efforts and waved it in front of MacGregor’s face. ‘What do you think of that as the likeness of a girl in her early twenties, sergeant?’
‘Well, it does look a bit like Henry Cooper,’ said MacGregor. ‘But, look, it’s nearly time to knock off now. Why don’t you give it a rest for today?’
Dan began to gather up the remnants of what had once been an efficient, well-regulated system. ‘We could go on with it tomorrow, I suppose.’
‘Er – no, not tomorrow,’ said MacGregor apologetically. ‘The chief inspector’s got to go down to Bath.’
Dover paused in his efforts to fit Henry Cooper’s face with a new, and possibly Roman, nose. ‘Says who?’ he demanded indignantly.
‘Commander Brockhurst’s instructions, sir,’ said MacGregor, conscious that the accusation Dover would undoubtedly make of sneaking was not entirely unjustified. ‘He is most anxious that we should follow up that purchase of the blue suede coat. He thinks it’s the most promising lead we’ve come up with so far, sir. He may well,’ said MacGregor, gazing at the Photofit picture which now looked like Henry Cooper after drastic plastic surgery, ‘be right.’
‘Huh!’ grunted Dover, ripping off an unsatisfactory hair line and hitting the nail on the head. ‘All old Brockhurst wants is to get rid of me for a bit!’
Eleven
DOVER SAW THE TRIP FROM LONDON TO BATH NOT so much as a railway journey but more as a prolonged nap.
“I hardly closed my eyes all night!’ he whined as MacGregor removed a fistful of closely written sheets of paper from his briefcase. ‘It’s my nerves,’ he explained in a vain bid for sympathy. ‘That kidnapping shot ’em all to pieces. My stomach’s screwed up in knots and my bowels are . .’
‘Commander Brockhurst wants a full progress report when we get back this afternoon, sir,’ said MacGregor, sorting the notes which he had sat up half the night writing. “He’s cracking the whip a bit at the moment. He wants these Claret Tappers under lock and key before they try snatching somebody who really matters.’
‘Ho, ta very much!’ snorted Dover. It’s nice to be told you don’t add up to a row of bloody pins, I must say! Not but what I hadn’t already got the message, laddie. ‘Strewth, I’d like to know how many other coppers would have been left to their bloody fate like I was. I. . .’
MacGregor cut through the lamentations. ‘I thought if we just started at the beginning and reviewed everything that had happened so far, we might come up with something, sir. A new line for further investigation might strike us or some piece of the jigsaw puzzle slip into place.’
Dover hoisted his feet up and rested them where some other unfortunate passenger was going to have to sit. ‘Or pigs might fly,’ he added helpfully.
‘I thought that, if I gave a quick resume of the whole affair, sir, you might correct me or . . .’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Dover, settling back and
