Commander Brockhurst had had time to collect his thoughts. ‘Well, I dare say old Wilf Dover will be feeling a bit on the anxious side but he’ll be sustained by the knowledge that all his colleagues and chums in the Met will be working twenty-four hours a day to secure his safe release.’ Commander Brockhurst risked a surreptitious glance up at the studio ceiling. So far it seemed to be holding firm.
‘Won’t Chief Inspector Dover consider, though, that the community has betrayed him?’ pressed the interviewer. ‘That same community, moreover, that he has devoted his life to protecting.’
Commander Brockhurst’s mind boggled slightly at the idea of Dover devoting his life to anything other than his own comfort, but he picked up the thread of his platitudes smoothly enough. ‘Old Wilf is a professional policeman,’ he assured the watching millions heartily, ‘and, like the rest of us, he’s used to taking the rough with the smooth. He’ll appreciate – as every thinking person in the country must – that a line has got to be drawn somewhere. The police have been advocating a tougher policy for years. The only way to get rid of these mindless thugs is to stamp on them – and stamp on them hard. Nobody is more sorry than I am that Wilf Dover is destined to be the guinea pig in this experiment but I know the man and there’ll be no whining or complaining from him.’
Out of camera range the producer, getting bored with Commander Brockhurst’s stout determination to be brave at some other poor bugger’s expense, began to make his wind-it-up signs.
Commander Brockhurst got in one last gesture from the Boy’s Own Paper code. Raising his thumb to the camera he grinned cheerfully. ‘Chins up, Dover!’ he counselled, and his use of the plural was a perfectly understandable Freudian slip.
The newscaster was Hashing his teeth again. ‘We’re going to take a short break now,’ he announced as though it was some kind of special treat, ‘but after the break we shall be bringing you an interview with Chief Inspector Dover’s wife, as well as the latest news on the dentists’ strike in Wales and Bobby Buxton on what it feels like to be worth two million pounds.’ The eyes crinkled appealingly. ‘Join us then!’
For connoisseurs of the human condition, Mrs Dover was a treat worth waiting for. She had been filmed earlier on in the evening in her own kitchen and she appeared on the screen looking astonishingly bright and cheerful. By a fortunate coincidence she had paid her monthly visit to the hairdresser’s that very morning and now faced the world from under a passing fair imitation of a corrugated iron roof. There had been some vague idea at first that she should be filmed performing some trivial domestic chore – like ironing her husband’s pyjamas. That, of course, had been before the television people had actually seen Dover’s pyjamas. When they had, they decided not to bother.
Mrs Dover was experiencing some difficulty in stopping talking. It only needed one word from her interlocutor and she was off, nineteen to the dozen. Yes, shocked simply wasn’t the word for what she’d felt when they’d told her that Wilfred had been kidnapped. She’d gone weak at the knees, really. And everything had started to go quite black and . . . No, of course she’d never imagined her husband would ever be so silly as to go and get himself kidnapped! Why on earth should she? The idea had never even crossed her mind. Things like that just simply didn’t happen to people like them and . . . Well, yes, naturally she was worried about him because, quite apart from anything else, his health wasn’t all that good and he was terribly prone to chills on the stomach and . . . Eh? Oh, yes, she did appeal to the kidnappers, wherever and whoever they might be, to let her husband go.
It was at this point that careful watchers might have detected a slight diminution in Mrs Dover’s sparkling good humour. The prospect of her husband’s safe return made her look fractionally less like a football pools winner than heretofore.
The interviewer carried on. ‘What do you think, Mrs Dover, about the decision of the authorities to refuse absolutely and entirely to compromise with the chief inspector’s abductors? Don’t you feel it grossly unfair that your husband’s life should be put at risk in this way?’
‘Well . . .’ Mrs Dover vacillated and pleated her best frock with nervous lingers. ‘Well . . .’ She took a deep breath and started again. ‘They did explain it to me and I can quite sec their point of view, you know. I mean, you can’t let this sort of thing go on for ever, can you? You’ve got to take a stand somewhere, don’t you? It’s just Wilfred’s hard luck that. . .’ Mrs Dover’s voice trailed off.
‘Quite!’ The interviewer was shown nodding sympathetically in a shot that had been filmed half an hour after the interview had ended.
Mrs Dover smiled shyly. ‘A hundred thousand pounds is quite a lot of money,’ she pointed out.
‘Indeed! Yes, I think we would all agree with that. And now, Mrs Dover, what are your plans for the immediate future?’
‘Oh, well, now I’ve been thinking about that. I shall pack in this place, of course, and move in with my younger sister. She’s got ever such a nice little house down in Essex and she’s a widow, too, so there’ll be plenty of room for me and my bits and pieces there.’
The interviewer was a little confused. ‘Temporarily, you mean? Just while you’re waiting for news about your husband’s fate?’ he asked.
Mrs Dover smiled forgivingly at the silly boy. ‘Oh,
