‘’Strewth!’ said Dover whose own life, while hardly exciting, was more fun-packed than that.
MacGregor was making a note in his notebook, i must get on to the local police and see if they can find out what train Knapper caught from Bowerville-by-the-sea.’
‘You could check if he got a train to Muncaster,’ rumbled Dover, apparently enjoying one of his more inspired moments.
‘I’ll check all the trains out of Bowerville that Sunday morning, sir,’ promised MacGregor, ‘wherever they were going. And I’ll check the buses, too.’
Dover waited until he’d got both hands clasped round his third pint before uttering again. ‘Have you seen the gents’ toilet in your travels, laddie?’
It was a tedious journey out to the suburb where Mr Knapper had had – and perhaps still did have – his residence, but Dover stood it well. Thanks to his bad toe, which was giving him more gyp now than before Mr Pettitt had got his murderous hands on it, they’d gone the whole way by taxi and MacGregor had passed the time wondering miserably how on earth he was going to fiddle this on his expenses sheet.
Number one hundred and seventy-six (or ‘Doreenland’) was, architecturally speaking, identical with all the other two hundred and four houses in the road but a gallant fight for individuality was being waged by the people who lived there. Number one hundred and seventy-six had not lagged behind in the drive to be different. No other house in the road (and probably not in the whole of North London) could boast a yellow front door and shutters plus a triangular goldfish pond under the bay window.
MacGregor opened the simulated wrought-iron garden gate and led the way up the crazy paving. He rang the door chimes.
Dover gave it a generous thirty seconds. ‘Nobody at home!’ he announced gratefully and prepared to waddle back down the path.
Unluckily for him, the door opened. MacGregor raised his hat and politely asked the obvious question.
‘Who wants to know?’
Carefully MacGregor explained that they were detectives from Scotland Yard engaged in making some enquiries. Carefully the lady who’d answered the door read through both warrant cards from first to last whilst Dover huffed and puffed with impatience on her doorstep.
‘I’m Mrs Knapper,’ admitted Mrs Knapper at last, and dared either man to take advantage of the fact. She was a woman who just missed being attractive. The eyes were a little too shrewd, the jaw a little too square, the arms a little too muscular.
MacGregor flashed his dimples nonetheless. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘It’s really Mr Knapper we’d like to have a word with.’
‘He’s not here.’
Dover got a boot in before the door closed.
Mrs Knapper’s face hardened. ‘Watch it, fattie!’ she advised. ‘One scratch on that paintwork and I’ll have you for willful and malicious damage!’
‘I wonder if you can tell us where we can get in touch with Mr Knapper?’ asked MacGregor, recklessly interposing his body between the point of Mrs Knapper’s chin and Dover’s fist. Not that the chief inspector would really have struck a defenceless woman, of course. Not in front of witnesses he wouldn’t.
‘No, I can’t.’
The curtain twitching in the windows of the houses on either side was growing phrenetic while further down the street doorstep sweeping and cat-summoning was reaching epidemic proportions.
MacGregor leaned forward. ‘Do you think we might perhaps step inside for just a moment, madam? I’m sure you don’t want all your neighbours . . .’
‘Stuff the neighbours!’ said Mrs Knapper, stepping forward to deliver a two-fingered salute up and down the road. ‘Mr Knapper’s scarpered,’ she said when she’d time to be bothered with the matter in hand again. ‘Done a bunk! Deserted me. And good riddance to bad rubbish, if you ask me. For all the good he was I might as well have taken my old grannie to bed with me.’
The problem of Dover’s growing impatience went clean out of MacGregor’s mind. ‘Mr Knapper’s gone? When?’
Mrs Knapper was not without a certain rude sense of humour. ‘Well, parts of him went years ago, if you must know, but he finally pushed off for good and all a couple of months ago.’ Her temporary good natured mood vanished as a dreadful thought struck her. ‘Here, don’t tell me you stupid bastards have gone and found the dirty-minded little bleeder?’
Understandably MacGregor hesitated.
‘Well, he’s not coming back here!’ snapped Mrs Knapper in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘I’ve had enough of him and his nasty habits to last me a bloody life-time. If you want that sort of thing, I told him straight, you effing well go and pay for it. There’s some as don’t mind what they do for money but I’m not one of ’em.’
There might have been some even more dramatic revelations if Mrs Knapper’s spate had not been interrupted by a bellow from the back of the house. ‘Doreen!’ came a deep, masculine voice.
Without turning her head Mrs Knapper bawled back. ‘What?’
‘Get your skates on, for Christ’s sake! You seen the time?’
‘I’m just coming!’
Since Mrs Knapper didn’t appear to be going to offer any explanation of this exchange, MacGregor pressed on with his questions about her errant husband. ‘Could you tell me what happened exactly?’
‘Nothing happened!’ retorted Mrs Knapper. ‘He just cleared off one weekend and never come back. No explanation and no effing letter left on the mantelpiece.’
‘What about his things?’
Mrs Knapper stiffened. ‘What about ’em?’
‘Did he take all his belongings or did he leave some of them behind?’
‘I gave him a fortnight,’ said Mrs Knapper, slightly on the defensive, ‘and then I flogged the lot. Clothes, books, bloody stamps, everything. I needed the room. Besides,’ – she folded her
