Thirteen
Nobody spoke for a long time on the way back. Not that it was exactly quiet inside the police car. Apart from the turned-down chatter coming from the radio, Dover’s stomach was rumbling fit to erupt and Elvira was snivelling away to herself on the back seat. Osmond had remained behind at the Houston Hostelry for further consultation with the man who pulled his strings, which was just as well since Elvira had, for the moment, gone right off men and had hysterically refused to share the back seat with even so dead-beat a specimen as Dover. T he interview she had had with a couple of Special Branch heavies, not noted for pulling their punches, had thoroughly demoralised her and the threats about what would happen to her if she ever so much as opened her mouth to anybody about anything had so instilled the fear of God into her that it was several days before blazing indignation replaced abject terror. Meanwhile, thanks to her attitude towards men in general and policemen in particular, Dover was sitting in the front of the car.
MacGregor was again doing the driving and really doing it quite well, considering that he had to shift several kilograms of Dover’s overhang every time it was necessary to change gear.
‘Let’s stop somewhere and get a bite to eat,’ said Dover after a prolonged bout of highly audible visceral protest. ‘’Strewth, it wouldn’t have hurt ’em to have laid a meal on for us back at that bloomin’ hotel.’
MacGregor kept his voice down. ‘I think we’d better get rid of the girl first, don’t you, sir?’
‘Bloody good idea!’ approved Dover, generously giving credit where credit was due. ‘Look,’ – the desire to see the back of old Moaning Minnie sharpened his night vision no end – ‘there’s a bus stop!’
It was not easy to convince Dover that Elvira could not just be dumped out in the dark in the middle of nowhere nor to persuade him that a bus stop per se by no means implied the prompt arrival of a bus going in the right direction. In the upshot MacGregor simply had to insist that, however inconvenient it might be, Elvira must be delivered safely right to her own front door.
‘Bloody women!’ grumbled Dover, and screwed another cigarette out of MacGregor by way of compensation.
MacGregor tried to switch the conversation into a less inflammatory channel. ‘I’m not at all sure, sir,’ he said, ‘exactly where we stand at the moment.’
Dover grunted non-committally.
‘I mean, are we being expected to refrain ffom pursuing our enquiries in every direction,’ asked MacGregor thoughtfully, ‘or have we just got to tread softly in those areas which are sensitive where the Special Branch is concerned?’
‘Ah,’ said Dover, already at sea.
‘Even the latter alternative, sir,’ mused MacGregor as he stared blankly ahead through the windscreen, ‘is going to present us with a number of problems. Supposing, for example, we eventually identify and charge the guilty person,’ – MacGregor was certainly giving his imagination full rein – ‘how on earth do we bring him to trial without disclosing motive? And how can we disclose motive without blowing the lid right off this Steel Band business? We can hardly pretend that Knapper was murdered because of some sort of quarrel over postage stamps. But, if we bring the Steel Band into it, how can we keep Osmond out? To say nothing of the fact that he’s wide open to being charged as an accessory whatever happens. And’ – MacGregor sighed unhappily as the complications piled up – ‘what about the Director of Public Prosecutions, sir? Will he accept all these conditions of secrecy and concealment? Are we supposed to keep the true facts from him or are we supposed to tell him but make him sign the Official Secrets Act first?’
‘Search me!’ grunted Dover. ‘Tell you one thing, though,’ – he settled back as comfortably as he could in his seat – ‘I’m not going to lose any bloody sleep over it.’
Surprise, surprise! thought MacGregor bitterly. ‘We shall have to decide what we’re going to do, sir.’
‘Not tonight, we shan’t!’ retorted Dover firmly.
‘The problem will still be there in the morning, sir.’
‘I didn’t like the look of that young punk the moment I clapped eyes on him,’ growled Dover, going off as was his wont at any old tangent. ‘A right cold-blooded fish! Fancy skulking under the bed-clothes while some poor bastard’s getting croaked next door!’ Dover’s indignation might well have been justified. After all, there’s absolutely no proof that he himself would have slept peacefully through somebody being murdered in the same room with him. He might, or he might not. It would all have depended on how much noise was being made.
‘He did find himself in a most desperate situation, sir,’ said MacGregor, anxious to be fair.
‘I didn’t go a bundle on that other chap, either,’ said Dover darkly. ‘Toffee-nosed, lah-di-dah ponce! Who does he think he is, eh? Laying down the law like a . . .’ Since the comparison failed to come tripping easily to the tongue, Dover substituted a contemptuous flap of his hand. ‘We don’t even know what his proper name is. Or his bloody rank.’ Dover’s eyes bulged indignantly as a horrible suspicion seeped into his mind. ‘’Strewth, I’ll bet the beggar’s junior to me! I’ll stake my bloody pension on it! He’ll be some lousy, jumped-up detective inspector who’s still wetting his bed every night! And he’s got the bloody nerve to start pushing me around and interfering with my work. Well, he’s got another bloody think coming!’ Dover marshalled
