Superintendent Trevelyan appeared to be trying to tie his swagger stick into a knot. ‘Have you been drinking, laddie?’ The watching policeman had no time to protest his innocence. ‘It is an animal, sir!’ he gabbled excitedly. ‘I can see it quite clearly now. A little Shetland pony. And it’s got those mail-bags on its back, sir! The mail-bags with the ransom money in them. It’s trotting off down the side of the hill now, sir!’
‘Northwards?’ MacGregor struggled with the large-scale Ordnance Survey map although he already appreciated the implications of the watching policeman’s report. ‘Oh, God – that’s right away from the roads. Look, there aren’t even cart tracks for miles in this direction. We haven’t got it covered. We’re not going to be able to follow!’
‘Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!’ Superintendent Trevelyan leaned forward as though the appearance of extreme urgency could in itself produce results. He clicked on his radio. ‘Where is the blasted pony now?’
‘Sorry, sir,’ – the watching policeman’s disappointed tones came across loud and clear – ‘it’s already gone out of my sight. It was moving pretty fast, sir, in spite of those mail-bags.’ Superintendent Trevelyan pulled the map out of MacGregor’s hands though he knew the surrounding countryside like the back of his hand. One irate glance was enough to confirm all his worst fears. That bloody pony, with half a million bloody quid on its back, could go for miles and miles and finish up anywhere. But the superintendent was not the man to cry over spilt milk. Firmly banishing the vision of those empty, rolling acres from his mind, he concentrated on the one aspect of the problem which really counted. ‘Somebody,’ he announced grimly in a way that left no doubt but that he was excluding himself from the calculation, ‘is going to answer with his head for this bloody balls-up!’
At the acrimonious de-briefing session which was held some couple of hours later, it became clear that Dover was the one being groomed for the role of sacrificial victim. Everybody, concerned was gathered in the saloon bar of The Bishop’s Crozier for the dismal purpose of mulling over what bad gone wrong. The air was thick with smoke and recriminations as the hot potatoes of this particular disaster were tossed recklessly from hand to hand. Gradually? however, the pattern of Superintendent Trevelyan’s bandwaggon began to emerge and his immediate underlings lost no time in jumping thankfully aboard. After all, dog traditionally does not eat dog, and men of the same police force do have a certain loyalty to each other. Much better to shove all the blame onto these toffee-nosed buggers from Scotland Yard. Well – let’s be fair – it was probably all their bleeding fault, anyhow.
‘Just a bloody minute 1’ Up to this point in the proceedings Dover had been worrying mostly about his feet, his stomach and his bowels. Now he suddenly became preoccupied with his skin. Holy flaming cats – these thick-headed, straw-chewing yokels were trying to frame him! ‘All I was supposed to do was to hand that ransom money over to the Claret Tappers and that’s all I did. It’s not my fault that your damned stupid arrangements blew up in your silly faces.’
‘You shouldn’t have thrown that radio away!’ countered the superintendent, who was nothing if not consistent.
‘And you shouldn’t have underestimated the Claret Tappers!’ retorted Dover. ‘A kid of two’d know they wouldn’t stick to the main roads just so’s you could keep an eye on ‘em.’ He raised his voice on the grounds that the best means of defence is often shouting. ‘They’re not a bunch of country bumpkins, you know!’
Superintendent Trevelyan, on the other hand, belonged more to the constant dripping school. ‘If you hadn’t tossed that valuable radio away? you could have tipped us off and we’d have had time to organise something. It’s entirely thanks to your bungling that the Claret Tappers slipped clean through our fingers – and I shall be putting that in my report to my Chief Constable.’ He broke off as the door into the bar opened and a rather oily young man came sidling into the room. ‘Well,’ demanded Superintendent Trevelyan as the newcomer paused obsequiously in front of him, ‘has the Prime Minister’s grandson been returned?’
The face of the oily young man fell. The news he was bearing was interesting and important, but not as interesting and important as that. Blimey, some people wanted it with jam on! ‘There’s no news about the Sleight baby, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve found the Shetland pony, though.’
Dover was not the man to let a chunk of bathos like that fall unnoticed. ‘Oh, big deal!’ he guffawed, thumping MacGregor in the ribs to encourage him to appreciate the joke.
The oily young man blinked but carried on gallantly. ‘The pony belongs to a Captain Berry, sir, up over at a place called Gallows Firm.’ He indicated the spot on the large wall map which some helpful bastard had hung up over the dart board. ‘It’s about three miles from where Mr Dover released the animal, sir, at the top of Fish Down. Three miles as the crow Hies, of course, sir.’
‘And not as the pony trots!’ sniggered Dover, giving his natural wit full rein.
Superintendent Trevelyan went quite red in the face. ‘Well, get on with it!’ he snarled at the oily young man who was standing with his mouth wide open.
‘Eh? Oh, yes – er – yes, of course, sir Well, we’ve only got the report of the local constable so far, sir, but it seems that Captain Berry reckons the pony was taken sometime last night. The captain thought he heard somebody moving around later on in the paddock but he didn’t get up to investigate. He says there’d be no trouble in luring the pony away because it’s a greedy little
