Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All

the other way. What else could I do?’ he demanded defensively. ‘ If I hadn’t made it stick I’d have been finished. And if I had, well the Chief Constable would have been gunning for me just the same. More so, probably.’
‘What was wrong with him?’
The station sergeant sighed. ‘You name it, he was up to it. It shook me, I can tell you. He was up to some tricks a chap with five times his experience wouldn’t have thought of in a hundred years. Girls – that was the first thing that started me scratching my head. We don’t get much trouble of that kind down here, but we get the odd bit. Every now and then young Cochran would bring one in – shop-lifting or some such charge. He’d take ’em in the Interviewing Room. No chaperone or witness or anything. Half an hour later the girl would come out, looking a bit hot and bothered and pulling her frock straight. All charges dropped. It happened two or three times. I knew what I’d find all right if I went and opened the door. But I didn’t. And neither did anybody else.
‘And then there was his off-duty hours. He was ear-marked for C.I.D., you know. He’d have been transferred already but even the Chief Constable couldn’t move him with less than a year on the beat. Well, I suppose young Cochran thought he’d better start getting his hand in. Started keeping some very queer company and hanging around in some very queer places.’
‘In Wallerton?’ asked Dover sceptically.
‘Oh, we’ve got our seamy side, sir, never you fear. Even the Ladies’ League can’t keep a whole town on the straight and narrow, though I must admit they have a damned good try. No, we’ve one or two characters knocking around that could do with an eye keeping on them.’
‘And that’s what young Cochran was supposed to be doing?’
‘So he said, Mr Dover, sir, so he said. There’s two ways of looking at it, isn’t there, though? Even so, I’ve got to admit, he got some results. I heard on the grape vine that the C.I.D. were quite impressed with him. You know what they’re like, sir. They think very highly of a young chap who goes out and finds his own villains and brings ’em in without waiting for somebody to tell him. They keep their eye on a young copper who shows a bit of initiative.’
‘Oh, very true,’ said Dover sententiously. ‘ That’s the hall-mark of a good detective, that is. Initiative, drive, thinking for yourself. I’m always telling MacGregor, here, that. Not,’ said Dover with a sniff, ‘that it seems to have much effect. Why, when I was a detective constable, never mind a sergeant, I …’
Dover’s entirely fictitious reminiscences continued unabated for some considerable time.
MacGregor waited with growing impatience until the eyes of even the station sergeant bulged with boredom and then plunged nobly into the breach. ‘A cigarette, sir?’
Dover, who’d never been known to refuse a free fag from anybody, even a dyed-in-the-wool criminal, grabbed for the case. While the Chief Inspector was temporarily speechless lighting his cigarette, MacGregor firmly turned the conversation back into more productive channels. He didn’t intend to spend the rest of his life rotting away in Wallerton, even if Dover did.
‘You were talking about Cochran’s underworld associates, Sergeant,’ he said smoothly.
‘Yes, that’s right.’ The station sergeant was grateful to find himself once more in the centre of interest. ‘ Like I was saying, Cochran started going out into the highways and byways, as they say, and began bringing in the odd tiddler. Nothing spectacular. He didn’t nick a Train Robber or anything, but he collared quite a nice selection of small fry.’
‘Very commendable,’ observed Dover. His stomach rumbled – a sure sign that he’d done enough work for one morning.
‘Ah, so you might think, sir, but, I dunno, it all stank a bit to me.’
Dover raised a languid eyebrow. His interest in the late Constable Cochran, Wallerton and crime in general was waning rapidly.
‘Too pat, sir,’ explained the station sergeant, who had not yet learned the butterfly nature of Dover’s powers of concentration when lunch was in the offing. ‘I don’t know about you, sir, but I’m always suspicious of these cases where everything’s cut and dried and every loose end neatly tied up in a bow. Life, in my experience, isn’t like that, sir. There’s always a few discrepancies, a few things that don’t fit in. But when Cochran nabbed somebody it was different. Take Charlie Hutchinson, for example, nicking radio sets from cars. We’ve been after him for months without being able to lay a finger on him. But one dark night Cochran just happens to be lurking out of sight not fifty yards from the very car that Charlie’s got his eye on. Not only that, but when Cochran runs Charlie in he had no less than five other radio sets on him – all stolen. And to cap everything, Cochran even runs the fence in as well. And then there was …’
‘I get the point,’ said Dover wearily. He yawned and made little smacking noises with his lips.
MacGregor glanced surreptitiously at his watch. Hell’s ringing bells, it was only just after twelve! He was blowed if he was going to let the old fool pack it in as early as this. ‘You think he was getting tipped off, do you. Sergeant?’
‘That’s it. You just keep off me and my friends and I’ll give you the nod when one of my enemies is up to a bit of villainy. Something along those lines.’
‘But you’ve no proof?’
‘No, it’s just a feeling. When you’ve been in the police as long as I have, you learn to respect your intuition.’
‘Was there anybody in particular that you thought Cochran was hob-nobbing with?’
‘Well, now, it’s funny you should mention that,’ said the station sergeant comfortably, and quite oblivious of Dover’s black looks. ‘Cochran was on first-name terms with half the town, of course,