‘Why the bloody hell not?’
An ashen-faced (and non-smoking) Headmaster stuck to his guns with the doggedness of which only the inherently timid are capable. ‘It’s a bad example for the children!’ he bleated.
Dover snatched the matches out of MacGregor’s hesitating hand and lit up defiantly. ‘There aren’t any bloody kids here!’
‘There are bloody kids everywhere!’ moaned the Headmaster, rocking desperately backwards and forwards in his chair. ‘They’re here all the time, watching and listening and sniffing. I try to keep them out but I’m fighting a losing battle. Dear God, don’t you people outside realize that Pupil Power has already taken over. It’s the hand that’s still in the cradle that’s rocking the world!’
‘In that case,’ snarled Dover, puffing smoke in all directions like the most satanic of those dark mills, ‘a few more fags here or there won’t make a ha’porth of bloody difference, will they?’ The three men remained closeted together for another hour without anything very profitable being achieved by anybody. This wasn’t as big a waste of Public Money as might at first appear, as none of them had really anything better to do with their time. In the end Dover and MacGregor were forced to beat their retreat with nothing more than the last known address of the girl’s parents to show for their morning’s pains.
‘And I’m telling you,’ said Dover when they were back once again sharing the rear seat of the police car, ‘that we’ll go and see Mr and Mrs What-d’you-call-’em tomorrow.’
‘But it seems such a waste of time, sir, to go all the way back to Frenchy Botham only to have to do the same journey again tomorrow. The Wallaces only live a mile or so away. We could be there in a matter of minutes.’
‘And have to break the news to them that their blooming daughter’s been croaked?’ Dover’s heavy jowls wobbled indignantly. ‘’Strewth, you know what it’ll be like. We’ll have ’em blubbering and snivelling all over the place. And we’d not get a sensible answer out of’em for bloody hours. It’ll be much better to let the local coppers handle it and us move in later when they’re over the shock.’
‘I doubt if there’ll be all that much grief, sir,’ observed MacGregor rather sadly. ‘The girl’s been missing for some time now and the parents seem to have done damn-all about it.’
Dover had found more arguments for his comfort. ‘Identification!’ he trumpeted, slapping a fat hand on an even fatter knee. ‘One of’em’ll have to come down to Frenchy Botham to identify the body. We’ll have ’em both shipped along tomorrow and then I can interview’em in peace and quiet at my leisure.’
MacGregor was dismayed. ‘But wouldn’t it be better to see them against the background of their own environment, sir? I know Pearl Wallace wasn’t living there at the time of her death, but it was presumably her home for the greater part of her life. You see, she seems to be such a nebulous sort of person, sir, that I feel any information we can get about her is valuable.’
‘We’re investigating a murder, laddie!’ Dover reminded him with that special sneer he reserved for anything smacking of the intellectual, ‘not doing an in-depth psychological study, for God’s sake! Besides, if she was all that bloody wishy-washy, she wouldn’t have gone and got herself killed, would she? She must have managed to get up somebody’s nose.’
‘Yes, and she managed to get herself pregnant, too, sir,’ agreed MacGregor. ‘I see your point. Poor kid, she didn’t have much of a life.’
Dover was indignant. ‘You want to save your sympathy for the living, laddie!’ he snorted. ‘There’s some of us who have to keep soldiering on no matter what.’
In the end a compromise was reached. In return for yet another expensive hotel lunch (plus liquid refreshment) Dover agreed to visit the Wallaces in their own home that very afternoon, provided that somebody else had broken the tragic news to them first.
MacGregor installed Dover in the nearest bar and rushed off to make the necessary arrangements and cash another cheque.
By the time Dover and MacGregor loomed up on the scene, the Wallaces had got over their initial shock and were now in the mood to start looking for a scapegoat. Or, at least, Mrs Wallace was. Mr Wallace liked a quiet life, though he had of course found out quite early on that agreeing with Mrs Wallace was the surest way of getting it.
Mrs Wallace hardly waited until she’d got Dover and MacGregor trapped in the three-piece suite in her front room. ‘I think it’s disgusting!’ she complained, opening her innings with an impressive display of righteous indignation. ‘A young girl like that! What were the police doing, that’s what I’d like to know!’
‘You’ve no doubt that the photograph you were shown is of your daughter, Pearl?’
Mrs Wallace fixed MacGregor with an angry glare and agreed that there was no doubt. ‘And I recognized the description of her clothes.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘I bought her that pantie and bra set myself, for her birthday. No, it’s our Pearl, all right. I knew something terrible would happen to her.’
Mr Wallace put his two-pennyworth in while his wife indulged herself noisily in her grief. ‘They’re taking us down there tomorrow to make the formal identification. We’re both going to go. It should be a nice run if the rain keeps off.’
MacGregor kept an impassive face. ‘When did your daughter leave home?’
‘The minute she could!’ snapped Mrs Wallace. ‘She was just turned seventeen. Collected
