What no curriculum vitae could have been expected to reveal, however, and what Sven failed to appreciate is that, although Dover was a right bastard, he was a lucky one. He was a survivor. They might call him Scotland Yard’s most unwanted man. They might complain that he made their posh new headquarters off Victoria Street look untidy. They might claim he had trouble remembering his own name and that he wouldn’t recognise a clue if it jumped and bit him. They might even assert that his usual method of picking out the murderer was by means of a pin, but what they couldn’t deny was that Dover was still there. Hundreds of far better men had fallen by the wayside while he plodded shamefully on – determined to draw his pension or bust. Dover had been bloody-minded from the cradle and he was buggered if he was going to change now.
He eyed Sven with dislike. Toffee-nosed git! ‘What is it this time?’ he demanded. ‘Bloody Reds under the bed again?’
Sven and Osmond exchanged knowing glances.
Sven adjusted his sun glasses. ‘No, not communists as it happens.’
‘The IRA, p’raps?’ guessed Dover, winking violently at MacGregor so that he shouldn’t miss the exquisite humour of these exchanges. ‘Another bunch of thick Micks coming to try and take a rise out of us?’
‘It’s an extreme Right Wing organisation,’ said Sven, slowly unwinding himself and rising to his feet. ‘Very extreme. Very determined. Very cunning.’
Dover blinked. ‘Do you mean that What’s-it-called lot?’ he asked curiously. ‘You know – that bunch Sir Who’s-your-father runs?’
Sven was bouncing about gently on the balls of his feet. He liked to give the impression that he was a man who kept himself physically pretty fit.
MacGregor broke in to try and clarify the situation. ‘I think the chief inspector means Sir Bartholomew Grice and the Steel Band mob, sir.’
Sven looked pained at this blatant breach of security. The choice of the hotel room had been completely random and Sven himself had checked for unauthorised bugging devices but, even so, junior detectives from the Murder Squad shouldn’t presume.
‘The Steel Band organisation,’ said Sven loftily, ‘is just the tip of the iceberg. What you might call the base of a pyramid whose sharp end is hidden in clouds of deception and fraud.’ He hurried on so as not to give anyone time to try and work this out. ‘It exists merely as a propaganda exercise, just to let the people of this country know that there is a neo-fascist organisation in our midst, and to attract recruits.’
‘What you call a “front”,’ said MacGregor, anxious to show that he had mastered the jargon.
Sven’s smile was condescending. ‘Quite,’ he agreed. ‘Now, they vet all their new-comers very carefully and those they consider have real potential are invited to step – as it were – behind the scenes. Only when they’ve proved themselves reliable and dedicated at this level are they permitted to advance higher, to where the real power and nerve centre of the organisation is located. It can take years and you don’t need me to tell you how difficult it is to penetrate a movement as cautious and security conscious as that. The people behind the Steel Band – and behind Sir Bartholomew because he’s merely a figure-head – are shrewd and cunning. They make very few mistakes and, when they do slip up, they correct the error with total ruthlessness. That’s why we considered it a great feather in our caps when we managed to get young Trill here right inside. It’s taken no less than three years of hard and delicate work to do that and you may as well realise here and now that I have no intention of allowing anybody to bugger it up.’
Oh, well, we all have our problems.
Dover certainly did. With a sigh he dumped his whisky glass on the bed-side table and began heaving himself to his feet. Since he gave quite a passable imitation of a stranded whale in its death throes, he caught and held everybody’s hushed attention.
‘Mind if I just use your toilet?’ Being Dover, he couldn’t just leave it at that. ‘I’ve got this stomach,’ he explained as he waddled at something of a lick across the room. ‘Anything upsets or disturbs me when I’m eating, like’ – he broke off to glower at Osmond – ‘having bloody guns pointed at me, and it gets me right in the guts. Shan’t be a sec!’ He banged the bathroom door behind him.
It was a long wait. MacGregor drifted off into a lovely daydream about this smashing detective chief superintendent with piercing blue eyes and a lantern jaw and who took such a really keen fatherly interest in . . .
Osmond, who – heaven only knows – had got more than enough urgent problems to be thinking about, was wasting his time in idle and lickerish speculation about the fair Elvira. Gosh, what wouldn’t he have given to have been the one detailed to de-brief her . . .
Sven, on the other hand, was staring in pathetic disbelief at the counterpane which still bore the marks (and probably always would) of Dover’s presence. There was the mud from his boots at one end and a nauseating melange of scurf and grease where his head had rested at the other. Sven couldn’t repress a shudder. No computer write-out or even a portrait-parle could prepare one for this sort of thing! And those appalling clothes! The bowler hat that looked as though it had been used for pig swill and the overcoat that
