Dover and the Claret Tappers

media, you know. Here in the nick it caused quite a deal of discussion. Some of my colleagues, I’m afraid, were slightly less than concerned about Mr Dover’s fate.’
‘I’ve put too many of ’em inside, that’s why!’ boasted Dover, recovering his aplomb. ‘The underworld has no cause to love me.’
‘Er – quite.’ Archie Gallagher caught MacGregor’s eye and winked.
MacGregor was not amused. It was one thing for Dover’s fellow coppers to have a quiet snigger at the old fool behind his back but quite another to have a lousy convict trying to make a laughing stock out of him. ‘In that case, Gallagher,’ he said tartly, ‘you’ll understand why we’re here.’
‘Why should I, my dear fellow?’
‘Oh, come off it!’
‘No, really!’
MacGregor’s eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t mess me about, chummy!’
‘Scout’s honour, sergeant!’ Archie Gallagher’s sense of humour was showing again. ‘I’ve been racking my brains ever since they told me a couple of bogies were coming all the way from the Smoke especially to see me.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘I did think you might be bringing me the Queen’s Pardon or something, but I can see it isn’t that.’
MacGregor let him have it straight. ‘We have reason to believe that you are connected with the Claret Tappers, the gang who kidnapped Chief Inspector Dover.’
‘Me? Mixed up with a gang of kidnappers?’ Archie Gallagher’s laugh was highly infectious but there wasn’t a flicker on MacGregor’s face as he stared at the elegant convict. ‘Is this your idea of a joke, sergeant?’
‘Look,’ said MacGregor in a bored voice, ‘why don’t you just come clean and save my time and yours?’
Archie Gallagher’s manner changed. ‘Save my time, copper?’ he jeered. Time’s the last thing I’m short of! I’ve got all the time in the world. Another live, goddam years in this stinking cess-pit so don’t you talk to me about time! And besides’ – he got his temper back under control – ‘why should I do you lot any favours? The cops have never done anything for me.’
Dover bestirred himself to give a little fatherly advice to his sergeant. ‘Slap him around a bit, laddie! Kick him in the kidneys! Shove your fist up his nose!’
‘Hey! Watch it!’ Archie Gallagher’s composure slipped a little and, while actually speaking to Dover, he managed to keep a wary eye on MacGregor. ‘He wouldn’t dare!’
‘Ho, wouldn’t he? He may look a right little milk-sop but he’s like a raving lion when he’s roused.’ Dover, as usual, was coming it a bit strong. ‘And I’ll swear you attacked him first,’ he added shrewdly.
‘Oh, sir!’ wailed MacGregor. He found all this crude, boot-in-the-guts stuff not only distressing but humiliating.
‘Well, get a move on then, for God’s sake!’ snarled Dover, throwing himself back petulantly in his chair. ‘’Strewth, I’m blowed if I’d let a blooming urban guerilla make a monkey out of me!’
There was no time for anybody to appreciate the joke.
‘Urban guerilla?’ repeated Archie Gallagher incredulously. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
A tiny worm of suspicion began to gnaw at MacGregor’s mind. ‘You are in here for terrorism, aren’t you?’ he asked ‘Planting bombs or organising riots or something in that line?’
Even hardened criminals have their pride. ‘I am not!’ roared Archie Gallagher indignantly. ‘How dare you? I’m a multiple bigamist, for God’s sake! I thought everybody knew that. As a matter of fact, I happen to disapprove very strongly of people employing violence to further their political ends.’
A pregnant silence followed this announcement.
‘Well, gentlemen?’
MacGregor avoided looking at Archie Gallagher ‘When the kidnappers stipulated your release from prison as one of the conditions for freeing Chief Inspector Dover unharmed, we naturally – er – assumed that you were one of them. Or at least that you were in sympathy with their ideas.’
‘Well, I’m not! Far from it! Ask anybody!’
Dover stuck his oar in. ‘You’ve got an Irish name!’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘So you’ve probably got Irish sympathies!’ Dover was never one to abandon a pet theory just because it was wrong.
Archie Gallagher was a gentleman and he broke the news as tactfully as he could. After all, in his profession you never knew when you might need a friendly policeman. ‘Mr Dover, I had an Irish great grandfather. That’s where the name comes from and that is my sole connection with Ireland, North or South. I’ve never even set foot in the place. Indeed, I pride myself that never, in my entire life, have I been further west than Torquay or further north than Cheltenham. You must understand that there’s no scope for a man like me in Ireland.’
It didn’t take much to get Dover’s mind flying off at a tangent. ‘How d’you mean,’ he asked, ‘no scope?’
Most people love talking about themselves and Archie Gallagher was no exception. To MacGregor’s dismay, the two men settled down for a cosy chat.
‘What outsiders don’t seem to appreciate, my dear chap,’ said Archie Gallagher, speaking with the voice of authority, ‘is that bigamy is a profession, not a hobby. Getting rich women to the altar is deuced hard work, believe you me. Especially these days.’
‘Harder now, is it?’ asked Dover with a surprising show of sympathy.
‘It’s this permissive society, Mr Dover,’ explained Archie Gallagher, shaking his head sadly. ‘If you knew the difficulty by explaining to these dratted women why you want to marry them. They just can’t understand why the blazes you should want to bother. When I first started, it was wedding bells or nothing, you know, but nowadays . . . I’m talking about society women, of course. I don’t have anything to do with the other sort. Oh, dear me, no! I came unstuck at the Horse Trials at Badminton, you know.’ Archie Gallagher examined his immaculate fingernails with some pride. ‘The arresting officer marched me right past Her Majesty. Ah me,’ – he sighed deeply – ‘it makes you wonder what the world’s coming to.’
The disastrous decline of social standards since the halcyon days of his youth was a theme guaranteed to pluck at Dover’s