Dover and the Claret Tappers

quite a few seconds before he began to register his surroundings. Then he realised that he was in a rather dark, small room with bare walls and a barred window set up high out of reach. The furnishings consisted of three wooden chairs grouped companionably round a small wooden table.
On one of the chairs a young woman was lounging. She looked as though she was about to fulfil America’s manifest destiny by following the covered wagons towards the setting sun. The enveloping shawl and the ankle-length dress were, of course, part of the new dispensation by which women prisoners were allowed to wear their own gear while inside. Dover, it need hardly be said, disapproved. In his book anybody stupid enough to get themselves nicked deserved an unrelieved regime of sackcloth, broad arrows and bread and water.
Miss Lesley Whittacker propelled her wodge of chewing gum from her right cheek to her Left. ‘Why do you bogies always go round in two’s?’ she asked.
MacGregor was too old a hand to get involved in that sort of question and answer session. He concentrated on introducing himself and Dover and on giving Miss Whittacker a brief resume of the reasons for their visit.
Miss Whittacker was impressed. ‘Fancy,’ she said.
‘We have been given to believe,’ MacGregor continued smoothly, ‘that you may be able to assist us in our enquiries.’
Miss Whittacker addressed herself to Dover. ‘Ooh, doesn’t he talk posh?’ she asked admiringly. ‘Not a bit like all the effing old pigs I’ve had to deal with.’
Dover responded with an admonition whose vocabulary, tone and accent were calculated to make Miss Whittacker feel much more at home.
‘You old sod!’ she chuckled. ‘Actually, he hasn’t asked me no bleeding questions yet, has he?’
‘What do you know about the Claret Tappers?’ demanded MacGregor.
‘Not a sodding thing, duckie!’
‘That’s the name of the gang that kidnapped Chief Inspector Dover, here.’
‘I’ve still never heard of ’em, but you can give ’em my heartiest congratulations when you catch up with ’em.’
MacGregor’s voice hardened. ‘Don’t give me all that crap, girl! You’re one of ’em, aren’t you?’
‘Me?’ asked Miss Whittacker wearily. ‘Come off it, Blue-eyes! Why should I go around kidnapping fat old policemen, for Christ’s sake?’
‘How about a hundred thousand pounds in ransom money?’ snapped MacGregor.
Miss Whittacker merely laughed. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing! Look, copper, I’ve been shut up in this cat house for twelve bleeding months, haven’t I? You tell me how I can be a part of a snatch for a hundred thousand nicker while I’m doing porridge and I’ll oblige. Like an effing shot!’
Dover scowled at the girl. ‘You’ve been in Holloway for the past year?’
‘More or less.’
Dover’s scowl deepened. ‘And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means, pig,’ spat Miss Whittacker, ‘that they kept me hanging about for a couple of bleeding weeks in Bristol, didn’t they?’
Dover had no scruples about hitting women, indeed on the whole he preferred it. There was less danger of retaliation. Before he’d got his clenched fist raised more than a couple of inches, though, MacGregor came galloping to the rescue with a penetrating and diversionary question.
‘Why should the Claret Tappers stipulate that you should be released from prison?’
Lesley Whittacker shrugged her shoulders. Underneath all the draperies and a lot of rather amateurishly applied make-up there was quite a pretty girl. MacGregor was just beginning to notice. ‘Search me,’ she said.
MacGregor cleared his throat. ‘Look, Lesley,’ he said, switching to a more friendly approach, ‘I know you really couldn’t care less whether anybody kidnaps Mr Dover or not. I mean, no policeman’s exactly your best friend, is he?’
‘The lousy pigs!’ said Miss Whittacker viciously. She snatched her chewing-gum out of her mouth and slapped it angrily on the underside of the table. ‘I were fixed at Bristol, you know. First that bloody store detective swearing black was white so’s she’d get her effing promotion and then that bleeding copper lying in his teeth. And they wouldn’t let me telephone my solicitor, either. Talk about a put-up job! I ask you – what would I want with eight transistors and five stop watches, for God’s sake?’
MacGregor could see that Dover was growing restless. ‘Yes, rotten luck,’ he said. ‘But to get back to these Claret Tappers. We must catch them, you see, because they might try again and next time they might take somebody who wasn’t a policeman.’
Miss Whittacker went slightly cross-eyed as she attempted to work this out but analytical thought was not her strong point. ‘Well?’
‘Well,’ said MacGregor, sensing that he was on a hiding to nothing, ‘well, I’m – er – sure you wouldn’t want to see an innocent person hurt, would you?’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said Miss Whittacker with massive indifference. ‘I was innocent and look where it’s landed me.’
‘You got a boy friend, miss?’
Much to MacGregor’s fury, Lesley Whittacker seemed to recognise her master’s voice. Although she kept a wary eye on Dover, she answered his question promptly. “I got dozens.’
“Politics?’
‘I’m a Conservative. They’re the ones with the yachts, you know, and the villas in the South of France and going shooting at Ascot and . . .’
Dover, having got the whole problem well and truly licked, sat back. ‘So, there’s your answer!’ he informed MacGregor.
‘Sir?’
‘’Strewth, do I have to spell every bloody thing out for you? Look, it’s perfectly obvious what’s happened.’
‘Is it, sir?’
‘If you’d keep your trap shut for a minute, I’d tell you!’ snarled Dover. He gesticulated in the direction of the now open-mouthed Miss Whittacker. ‘This girl’s not one of your political agitators. Any fool can see that. And, if she’s been shut up in the nick for the last twelve months, she can hardly have had a hand in my kidnapping, can she?’
‘Well,’ began MacGregor doubtfully.
But Dover was after a cup of tea and a couple of buns in the prison officers’ sitting-room, not a bloody debating society session. ‘So, if somebody wants to spring her, it’s not for the sake of her vote at the next flaming general election, is it?’
‘You