Dover and the Claret Tappers

in bed by rights, you know. Or at least on a couple of weeks’ sick leave. They’ve no business sending me off all over the country on a wild goose chase.’
They were walking along the platform, looking in the carriage windows.
‘The train looks as though it’s going to be rather full, sir.’
‘Dartmoor!’ scoffed Dover, already beginning to lag behind. ‘It’s a waste of time. That convict won’t tell us a blind thing. You know it and I know it and . . . Oh, ’strewth, let’s get in here!’
‘I’m afraid all the seats are booked, sir,’ said MacGregor, turning to lug Dover up the step. ‘We seem to have picked a rather popular train.’
‘Booked?’ Dover pushed his way into the carriage and surveyed the forest of tickets hanging down from the backs of the seats. ‘We’ll soon fix that!’ He selected a couple of likely looking window seats and, leaning across, quickly ripped the reservation tickets off them. ‘Here,’ he commanded, pushing the tickets into MacGregor’s nerveless hand, ‘shove these in your pocket!’
‘But, sir, we can’t. . .’
Dover was already inserting his seventeen and a quarter stone behind the little table. ‘And, if anybody starts asking awkward questions, show ’em your warrant card and threaten to run ‘em in if they don’t belt up!’
There was trouble, of course, and MacGregor had to deal with it while Dover buried his head in his newspapers. There were complaints, appeals to MacGregor’s sense of decency and finer feelings. The guard was fetched. Names and addresses were demanded and taken. In the end it didn’t add up to much and that nice couple who were going to celebrate their golden wedding in Torquay still had to stand nearly all the way to Exeter.
Dover dropped the last newspaper to join the others in an untidy and disintegrating heap on the floor. He was very disappointed and, if he’d had a classical education, the adage sic transit gloria mundi might have come to mind What on Wednesday had been: ‘POLICEMAN! TRAGIC PAWN IN POLITICAL KIDNAPPING!’ and on Thursday had been: ‘WILF DOVER! SACRIFICIAL VICTIM IN TERROR SNATCH!’ had now, on Friday morning, become half a column in the centre pages headed ‘Lucky Jack Released Unharmed’.
‘They haven’t even put a picture of me in today,’ whined Dover. ‘That’s all the thanks you get for laying down your life for your country!’
‘Sir?’
Dover took violent exception to the quizzical way MacGregor raised his eyebrows. ‘You just want to watch it, laddie!’ he snarled. ‘I was the one with his neck on the chopping block and don’t you forget it! Nobody asked me if! minded being led like a lamb to the slaughter. You just wait till the next poor bugger has to face sudden death and see what he bloody well feels about it!’
MacGregor fancied he’d caught the faint whiff of a clue. ‘You think the Claret Tappers will try again, sir?’
‘Wouldn’t you? ‘Strewth, they still want the money and they still want their murderous chums out of the nick, don’t they? I keep telling you, we’re dealing with a bunch of blood-thirsty desperadoes and you’d do well to remember it.’
MacGregor leaned across the table as some of the most beautiful country in England raced unseen past the windows. ‘Did you overhear them talking about doing a second kidnapping, sir?’
‘You never stop, do you?’ asked Dover wearily. ‘I’ve told you a million times – I never heard ’em talking about anything. Why don’t you wash your ears out?’
MacGregor sank back. Oh well, he might have guessed. He could see that Dover’s eyelids were beginning to droop but there was no time to waste. The two hairy young men in walking boots who were occupying the seats next to the detectives had departed to the restaurant car but they would be back before long and their presence would put paid to any discussion of the case. Dover was just going to have to wait for his forty winks.
‘I’ve been wondering, sir, if we might work on the assumption that the Claret Tappers are a London-based gang. Just a tentative hypothesis, you understand.’
Dover merely stared.
‘I’ve been trying,’ said MacGregor earnestly, ‘to kind of think myself into the minds of the kidnappers.’
Dover’s lips barely moved. ‘God flipping help us!’ MacGregor pressed on. After all, the last thing he expected from his chief inspector was appreciation. ‘I can’t help feeling that the whole kidnapping was based in London, if you follow me. You were snatched in London, the ransom letter was posted in London, they used a typical London taxi for transport and you were released in London. Now, as I figure it, all this must imply that we’re looking for people who live in London or at least know the metropolis pretty well.’
Dover’s piggy little eyes narrowed. ‘If the whole caboodle’s based in London,’ he demanded crossly, ‘what the blue blazes are we doing haring off to bloody Devon?’
The real reason for this tedious journey was the fact that Commander Brockhurst had reverted abruptly to his habitual policy of keeping Dover as far away from New Scotland Yard as was humanly possible. The moment he had heard that Dover was out of hospital and, in the opinion of his doctors, not only fit for duty but in dire need of it, he had started looking around for some way of getting rid of him. A visit to the distant Dartmoor Prison seemed a heaven-sent solution. ‘And there’s no need to hurry back,’ he’d told MacGregor. ‘I’d sooner have the job done properly than done badly in a sweat.’
Naturally MacGregor had to find a more diplomatic explanation than the crude truth for Dover. ‘We have to see this Archibald Gallagher, sir. He’s one of the men, if you remember, that the Claret Tappers wanted released from prison.’
‘He’ll not tell us anything,’ grunted Dover. ‘They never do. They take an oath or something. How much did he get, anyhow?’
‘He got sentenced to eight years, sir.’
Dover’s eyes opened wide. ‘Eight years? Strewth, is that all?