‘I know we bloody well are, laddie! And I’ll tell you something else. I’ll bet you Osmond’s got some connection with Muncaster somewhere. Prior knowledge. That’s why he picked the place. You’d better get cracking on that and find out.’
‘What are you going to do, sir?’
MacGregor’s question was prompted by the unlovely spectacle of Dover trying to hoist his unwieldy bulk into the vertical plane. One of the troubles with their tiny office was that, when one person changed his position, everybody else had to as well. MacGregor found himself being forced into the frenetic quadrille necessary if Dover was to reach the door without shoving the corner of his desk through the window.
‘Going to see old Punchard, of course!’ explained Dover, puffing hard.
MacGregor had been afraid of that. ‘Oh, not so fast, sir,’ he begged. ‘It’s all very speculative so far. In any case, all this business about the fingerprints and the lighter fuel – it’s only good enough to tie Osmond in with the hiding of the body. There’s not a scrap of evidence to show that he was responsible for the actual murder.
‘That’s good enough,’ said Dover philosophically. He was always more than willing to settle for second best. ‘He’d not get a longer sentence for strangling the poor bastard, would he? Besides,’ – he made another surge in the direction of the door and trapped MacGregor’s leg quite painfully behind the filing cabinet – ‘once we charge him with anything, what do you think the rest of ’em are going to do? They’ll all gang up on him and swear blind that he got both cards in the deal.’
‘Oh, sir!’ MacGregor was growing more and more unhappy as he saw the control of the case galloping away from him. ‘We can’t do that?’
‘Why not?’ asked Dover in genuine surprise. ‘It’s our job to get a conviction, isn’t it? Besides, I reckon it’s probably true. Put yourself in Pettitt’s shoes. Would you leave Knapper’s execution to chance? I wouldn’t. I’d pick the most likely-looking beggar in the group and see he got the job or – like now – both jobs.’
MacGregor would dearly have liked to pause and consider these possibilities but Dover’s advance was remorseless. ‘I suppose it’s possible, sir,’ he gasped before he was flattened up against the wall, ‘that the Steel Band lot had somehow rumbled Osmond and just set him up. Be a bit ironic, wouldn’t it? Using an undercover cop to do their dirty work for them?’
‘If there’s one thing you could rely on that young ponce, Osmond, for,’ declared Dover as he finally actually got hold of the door handle, ‘it’d be doing his own grannie in if he thought it would pay him. He’d not bat a bloody eyelid. Well’ – Dover threw out his chest proudly – ‘I’ve got him stitched up good and proper. He’ll live to regret the day he pulled a gun on me, the ambitious little punk.’
‘You do realise, sir, that we have no evidence as yet against Osmond for anything?’
Dover dragged the door open. ‘We’ve got motive,’ he said. ‘He didn’t want his cover blown in the Steel Band. We’ve got opportunity. Well, he was bloody there when it happened, wasn’t he? And we’ve got . . . ’Strewth, that business of not destroying What’s-his-name’s bloody fingerprints clinches it. Look, laddie, I’ve done the hard bit for you. All you’ve got to do is dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s. It’s a piece of bloody cake! Anyhow, I’ll be in with old Punchard if anybody wants me. After I’ve been to the toilet.’
Commander Punchard might have been highly delighted to have embarrassed his rivals in Special Branch, but actually charging one of their number with murder was a different kettle of fish. Especially when the murder might be considered as having been committed for England, if indeed it had actually been committed at all. At the very least Osmond and his superiors would claim that the lad had been acting strictly in the line of duty.
Thanks to Dover’s typically premature announcement that he had solved the mystery of Knapper’s depth, Commander Punchard had time to consider the pros and cons of the situation. In the end, after much heart-searching, he came to the conclusion that though revenge may be sweet, knowledge of such highly confidential and damaging information is better than money in the bank.
A compromise was reached and the whole incident was hushed up. The great British public were thus enabled to retain their faith untarnished in the police, the Secret Service, the Monarchy, parliamentary government and anything else that took their fancy. Of course, things didn’t just go on as before. Changes had to be made. It was generally agreed, even by Special Branch, that young Osmond’s services could not be retained, but he went out to join the Mounties in Canada with some brilliant references and recommendations. Commander Punchard’s thirst for vengeance was slaked by the award, after a decent interval, of the OBE and a year’s secondment to the Bahamas.
And Dover?
Well, Dover would have preferred to have his mouth stopped with gold but, when they offered him promotion to detective superintendent, he took that instead.
