Osmond failed to reassure Dover and MacGregor with a self-satisfied nod. ‘She’ll be de-sensitized separately,’ he explained as he moved on to the neighbouring bedroom door.
There was yet another bout of complicated tapping and Dover, for one, put poor Elvira and her fate right out of his mind while he indulged in a few anxious quivers about his own immediate future. ’Strewth, he thought unhappily as he gazed up and down the long deserted corridor, they could just disappear here without a trace! Nobody knew they were here. Nobody’d seen them come into this blooming hotel and a kid of two could make certain that nobody saw them going out. A couple of cabin trunks – and Bob’s your bloody uncle!
When the bedroom door opened, Dover, although naturally dying to take all the weight off his feet, went through with considerable reluctance.
Once again, whoever opened the door took good care to remain out of sight until the three of them – Dover, MacGregor and Osmond — were well inside the room.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen! I am Sven.’
More undulating than walking, the man who had spoken moved away from the door. He was extremely tall, extremely thin and noticeably willowy. Hospitably he stretched out a hand in which every bone seemed twice the normal length.
Osmond quickly made the introductions. ‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Dover, sir, and this is Detective Sergeant MacGregor. Both from the Murder Squad, of course.’
‘Delighted!’ murmured Sven, making sure his smile went right up to and included his eyes. He had spent a long time practising this smile and had now very nearly got it right. ‘Do, please, sit down and make yourselves at home. There are drinks on the window sill.’ The long, bony hand flapped in the appropriate direction. ‘I wonder – would you excuse frill and myself for a couple of seconds while we have a little whisper together in the corner?’
With Sven and Osmond busy exchanging confidences in the bathroom, Dover started feeling a lot happier. He stretched himself out full length on the bed and watched MacGregor pour out a good stiff whisky. ‘Bit of all right this, eh?’ he queried amiably. ‘Are there any fags in that box? Oh, smashing!’ He helped himself to a handful. ‘This is what I call pushing the boat out!’
MacGregor was less enamoured of the situation. ‘Personally, sir,’ he said as he handed Dover his drink, ‘I prefer to keep well away from Special Branch. You hear some very funny tales about them.’
‘Garn!’ scoffed Dover whose pangs of inter-departmental jealousy were soluble in Scotch. ‘They don’t scare me! They’re nothing but a bunch of lily-livered ponces with all this bloody silly cloak-and-dagger stuff. They’re not what I call real coppers at all.’
‘Perhaps not, sir, but the fact remains that they carry a great deal of weight. What they say goes.’
‘Not where I’m concerned it bloody doesn’t!’ boasted Dover. ‘Hey, quick, give us a refill! They’re coming back.’
Eleven
‘Subversive?’ squealed Dover, although Sven obviously hadn’t finished speaking. ‘You must be joking! All they do is collect bloody postage stamps!’
Sven, now wearing the dark glasses he’d forgotten to put on earlier, remained calm and enigmatic. ‘Things are not always what they seem, Chief Inspector.’
‘Come off it!’ invited Dover. ‘I’ve bloody met ’em! A toe doctor, a potty old woman who breeds goats and What’s-his-name – the fellow who got croaked – a piano tuner. If that’s all that’s threatening the safety of the realm, we can sleep easy at nights. You must have gone barmy!’
Osmond seemed upset. ‘The Dockwra Society is just a cover,’ he explained earnestly. ‘Designed to allow members of the group to maintain contact with each other without arousing suspicion. It’s a technique this bunch use a lot. Almost all their cells function under the disguise of specialised clubs of pigeon fanciers or chess players or nature lovers or something. It happens to be an extremely effective way of running a seditious organisation.’
‘It doesn’t sound effective to me!’ sneered Dover. ‘’Strewth, you’ve apparently infiltrated it easy enough. And you’ve got ’em so well trained they phone you up and warn you the cops are coming.’
Sven leaned forward – a simple movement which seemed to take him ages to accomplish. ‘We have indeed managed to penetrate the innermost recesses of this organisation, Chief Inspector,’ he murmured, ‘but this was by no means easy, not at this level. I doubt if we could do it a second time. Even if we could, it would take years of painstaking effort. That is why my masters’ – he smiled deprecatingly – ‘we are most anxious – adamant, even – that the cover of young Trill here should not be blown. We are dealing with a matter of national security which must, should there at any stage be a conflict of interests, take precedence over the investigation of a mere murder.’
Dover was now sinking into a rather nasty little hollow which his weight had made in the bed and seemed likely to be buried in the assorted detritus he couldn’t help shedding wherever he was. The hollow was gradually but inexorably filling up with cigarette ash, dandruff, fragments of potato crisps, salted peanuts and even the odd trouser button (Mrs Dover being no less fastidious than the rest of us). All in all it was not an edifying sight and Sven might be forgiven for pigeon-holing Dover as an easy pushover. Apart from the evidence of his own eyes, Sven was also fully briefed as to Dover’s past career and achievements. The briefing had been somewhat rushed and superficial but the picture which emerged of a man who was stupid, work-shy, prone to gratuitous violence and probably dishonest was reasonably clear. Some of the finer detail was missing, of course, such as the true story of
