With MacGregor’s help, she set off in the right sort of direction for the small town in which Mr Osmond lived but the route lay across moorland of astonishing bleakness and desolation. If there were any public houses in the vicinity Elvira managed to avoid finding even one of them until well after closing time. She couldn’t find top gear, either, but that’s another story.
Inside the police car, tempers began to get frayed, tears began to flow and Dover’s language became such as would have melted the wax in a drill sergeant’s ears. In the end, however, even he had to accept the inevitable and with the illest of ill grace he told MacGregor to tell the stupid little bitch that he’d settle for a snack bar.
Elvira’s response to such generosity was to throw back her head and blubber.
Dover couldn’t believe it. ‘Wadderyemean?’ he howled. ‘Early bloody closing?’
Elvira took both hands off the wheel while she blew her nose. Lover boy back in Police Headquarters was going to get a piece of her mind about all this! Early closing, she explained damply, meant that everywhere closed early. She might have said more if she hadn’t found MacGregor swarming all over her in an attempt to get at the steering wheel before the whole kit and caboodle of them finished up in the ditch.
Dover rose above these petty considerations and, this attack on his personal comfort sharpening up his ideas, grimly spelt it out for Little Miss Dumb-bell: sustenance or else. ‘When,’ he said, ‘we get to wherever it is . . .’
‘Gattersby, sir,’ said MacGregor, reluctantly surrendering the steering wheel to Elvira. ‘It’s probably early closing there, too.’
‘There’ll be somewhere open,’ growled Dover. ‘And this damn-fool girl’d better find it. Teach her to be a bit more considerate about other people’s feelings.’
‘There might be a shop,’ agreed Elvira, pouting reproachfully at a telegraph pole which had only just missed her front bumper.
‘A couple of pork pies,’ – Dover had got his requirements off pat – ‘a cheese-and-pickle sandwich, a ham sandwich, and one of those apple tart things in a cardboard box.’ His face relaxed almost into a smile as he listed the toothsome goodies.
Elvira wasn’t used to this kind of thing. ‘I haven’t got any money.’ Well, gentlemen were supposed to pay for girls, weren’t they?
‘MacGregor’ll give you some. Just get cracking, girlie! Drop us off at this chap’s place and then, soon as you get back, bring all the grub straight in to me. No hanging about!’ He made a nauseating play for Elvira’s sympathy. ‘It’s my stomach, you see. Miss a meal and I’m writhing around on the bloody floor in agony, spewing my guts up.’
Although MacGregor had taken a chance with Mrs Hall and trusted that she would be home when they called, he didn’t push his luck too far. He telephoned through and made absolutely sure that Mr Osmond would be at home to receive them. Since Mr Osmond was a salesman for a company marketing bar accessories for pubs and clubs, his working hours were fairly flexible and he agreed to suspend his efforts to boost the sales of personalised beer mats in order to assist the police in their enquiries. Actually, the telephone conversation hadn’t been quite as gentlemanly as this summary might suggest, and MacGregor was a little apprehensive about how the interview might develop. Dover didn’t care for smart-alec yobboes who couldn’t keep a civil tongue in their heads and, unless they really were seven-stone weaklings, usually expected his sergeant to do something rugged about it.
Mr Osmond lived in a bed-sitter in a part of Gattersby which was at least handy for the railway station. It was an insalubrious, sullen sort of area and Elvira was quite relieved that she didn’t have to wait around out there in the car. There are some things against which even a policewoman’s uniform is of little protection.
Dover and MacGregor mounted the stairs to the second floor with that slow-paced dignity which is so typical of our guardians of the law and so appropriate to an unhealthy slob of Dover’s weight and years.
Osmond didn’t hurry himself about answering their knock and he also took his time about examining their credentials before letting them across the threshold of his room. MacGregor had always thought that commercial travellers were gregarious, open-hearted chaps, ever ready with the quip and the smile. If they were, Osmond must have been an exception. He didn’t even look the part. He was a big, raw-boned, heavily muscular young man in his late twenties, with a battered face, a thick neck and large powerful hands. At least MacGregor didn’t have to worry about Dover’s reactions. Mr Keith Osmond was far too rough and tough a character for the chief inspector to get stroppy with, preferring as he did to restrict his own personal violence to pregnant women, old-age pensioners and small children too young to go telling tales to their parents.
With unaccustomed self-effacement, Dover pussy-footed it across to the chair by the gas fire and sat, there, quiet as a mouse.
Mr Osmond resumed his seat at the table, where apparently he’d been writing up his order book, and, tipping his chair well back, propped his feet up on the window sill. Then he slowly unwrapped a piece of chewing gum and slid it into the trap of his strong white teeth. If his behaviour patterns owed much to the stereotype tough guys he’d seen on the telly and in the cinema, it didn’t make the air of mindless menace which emanated from him any less disconcerting.
MacGregor resolved to adopt Dover’s low-profile approach. Cautiously and carefully he got his notebook out. Somehow one just didn’t care to risk any sudden movements in Mr Osmond’s vicinity.
‘Well, get a move on, darling!’ invited Mr Osmond, rotating his chewing gum into the other cheek and scratching himself very unpleasantly under the arm pit. ‘Don’t be shy!’ And then, as though he hadn’t
