‘Ah,5 said MacGregor, catching on at last, ‘you mean whisky, sir?’
It was three o’clock in the afternoon.
Captain Maguire’s face darkened. ‘You’re not a tee-totaller, are you?’ he asked in tones so menacing that the Doberman bared his teeth again.
‘I’m not!’ said Dover, anxious that the interview shouldn’t get off on the wrong foot. ‘And I take it straight!’
‘Good man!’ Captain Maguire slopped a generous ration of the amber liquid into a half-pint tankard. ‘You’re a chappie after my own heart! But what about Little Lord Fauntleroy here? We can’t leave him out in the cold. Would he prefer a drop of the old ruin?’
Dover was already expanding like a flower in the sheer warmth of Captain Maguire’s welcome. At least this fellow kept a drop of decent booze. ‘Oh, forget him!’ he advised. ‘He’s still wet behind the ears.’
‘He’s got to learn to hold his liquor, my old darling,’ said Captain Maguire, eyeing MacGregor dubiously. ‘There’s no room at the top these days for a laddie who can’t keep a clear head when all about are losing theirs.’
Dover sank to hitherto unexplored depths of disloyalty. ‘He’ll go puking all over your office,’ he warned, getting bored with the discussion. ‘He doesn’t drink anything stronger than tea. Besides,’ – he passed his glass back over the desk for a refill – ‘he’s got to take notes.’
Captan Maguire filled up Dover’s tankard and his own. ‘Oh, one of your pen-pushing brigade, is he? Say no more! I know the breed. Well,’ – he paused to dry off his moustache – ‘let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Sir Bert gave me a tinkle but the poor old sod wasn’t at his most coherent. Bends the old elbow a bit, you know. Still, none of us is perfect.’
Sycophantly Dover agreed and unbuttoned his overcoat. It was getting very hot in the office. ‘They found this dead man, you see,’ he explained. ‘On that rubbish dump. Couple of days ago.’
‘I read about it. What a way to pass through the pearly gates, eh?’
‘When they slit him open, they found this blue bead thing inside.’ Dover snapped his flabby fingers and MacGregor obediently produced what could, with a modicum of luck, be the chief exhibit in a murder trial and gave it to Captain Maguire.
‘Yes, it’s one of ours,’ declared Captain Maguire when he’d managed to get both eyes focussed on the target at the same time. ‘It’s a Giggle.’
MacGregor, who was indeed taking notes, looked up. He was rather shocked at such levity. Captain Maguire was, after all, wearing a Brigade of Guards tie.
‘And so worth twenty-five Titters,’ Captan Maguire went on with a grin. ‘Twenty-five Titters,’ he chanted, ‘equals one Giggle. Five Giggles equals one Snigger. Ten Sniggers equals one Guffaw.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you, sir.’
‘Actually, sonnie boy, that’s the idea. For you not to understand it, I mean.’ Captain Maguire got a small cigar box out of one of the desk drawers and tipped the contents out with a careless hand. Blue, yellow, green and red beads went skittering in all directions. ‘The token things we use instead of the genuine spondulicks,’ he explaind. ‘I thought Sir Bert was supposed to have briefed you up in the old Metropolis.’
‘I hadn’t appreciated it was quite so elaborate, sir.’
‘Got to be, old son.’ Captain Maguire made several genuine but unsuccessful efforts to pick the Funny Money up and put it back in the cigar box. ‘Otherwise even the stupid buggers we get here would twig what was going on. As it is, most of ’em go their entire bleeding holiday without ever working it out that our ice creams cost two and a half times as much as they do outside. Still,’ – he leaned back and groped around in a cupboard for a fresh bottle – ‘it gives the poor sods something to think about, doesn’t it? Takes their minds off the weather and the plumbing.’
‘Don’t the holiday-makers complain, sir?’
‘Of course they complain, boyo! They complain endlessly. About everything.’ Captain Maguire dropped the dead man in his waste-paper basket. ‘Mind you, they enjoy it. Like traffic jams and strikes at Heathrow. It brings a touch of glamour into their grotty lives. Of course,’ – he tossed the top off the new bottle in the general direction of his ashtray – ‘occasionally one of the more persistent and bloody-minded bleeders goes too far and actually manages to penetrate right in here. Well, they get precious little change out of me! The last bolshie-type bastard who had the damned gall to raise his voice in my office got the toe of my boot up his backside before I set the dog on him.’
‘Good heavens!’ said MacGregor.
‘Threatening to sue,’ added Captain Maguire proudly. ‘Nineteenth this year. All talk, though.’
Captain Maguire was so clearly a man after Dover’s own heart that the chief inspector felt he wanted to do something to show his appreciation. He addressed MacGregor in an unaccustomed burst of generosity. ‘Show him the picture!’
‘Are you sure, sir?’
‘Course I’m sure!’ snapped Dover, irritated that his munificence should thus be questioned. ‘You want the joker identified, don’t you?’
MacGregor got the photograph which had been taken of the dead man out of his wallet and reluctantly passed it over.
‘Christ Almighty!’ exclaimed Captain Maguire blinking.
Dover leaned forward. ‘Do you recognise him?’
‘His own mother wouldn’t! What the devil’s happened to him?’
‘He was burnt, sir, and of course his teeth have been removed.’
‘Jesus!’ Captain Maguire handed the photograph back and restored his shattered nerves in the only way he knew how. ‘Not that it makes much odds,’ he said as his second mouthful hit the spot. ‘I never look at their faces. They’re all just bundles of pound notes to me, and I’ve every intention of keeping it that way. God, you’d go round the bend if you started thinking of a smelly shower like that as human beings.’
Dover deposited his empty tankard with a thump on the desk. ‘It doesn’t have to be a holiday-maker,’ he pointed
