You cunning old bastard! thought Pascoe.
He glanced back as he left the office. The fat man was smiling and nodding his head as though in accord.
If you have to do a job, do it properly, was a maxim which Pascoe believed in. The essence of search is surprise. For this reason he had devised the strategy of dividing his team, sending four round to the Industrial Estate entrance to the encampment while he and two other DC's drove into the Aero Club car park where Wield was already waiting.
With him was a rather puzzled-looking blond man who was introduced to Pascoe as Austin Greenall, the club secretary. He and Wield were looking towards the section of the old aerodrome where the gypsies were. Just over the picket fence a large bonfire had been lit. Its flames were scarcely more than a violet vibration of the air in the bright sunlight, but a plume of dark smoke curved up from the fire towards the club house.
'What's going on?' asked Pascoe.
'Perhaps they feel the cold, sir,' suggested the shirt-sleeved Wield.
'Is it a hazard?' said Pascoe to Greenall, glancing up beyond the smoke to where five or six gliders wheeled slowly high in the sky.
'No, there's not enough for that,' said Greenall. 'If anything, it could be useful. Shows the wind drift and strength.'
'So, no complaints, sir?'
'Do you want me to complain?' wondered Greenall looking at Pascoe curiously. 'I mean, are you after an excuse to go in there?'
'Don't need an excuse, sir,' interjected Wield. 'Not if we've got a warrant.'
'Which we have,' said Pascoe. He spoke into his personal radio. 'Preece, you and the others ready? OK. Wait till you see us coming over the fence, then move in.'
'Are you expecting someone to run?' asked Wield as they set off across the grass.
'Not really,' said Pascoe. 'But if someone did run I don't want Mr Dalziel asking why I hadn't thought of it.'
In fact if anyone had wanted to run, there was plenty of time for it. The picket fence had been repaired so effectively that the policeman had to climb over it, a dangerous and undignified business that soon drew the attention of the crowd of gypsies standing just outside the circle of unbearable heat from the fire which seemed to be centred on a wooden pole rising out of the flames, gruesomely like a martyr's stake.
'It's the tent,' said Pascoe suddenly, and his guess was confirmed by the emergence from the spectators of Rosetta Stanhope. She looked all gypsy now in a dirndl skirt with a red and blue blouse and her hair tied back in a green and yellow bandanna. Her brow was smeared with ash, though whether by accident or by ritual design, Pascoe did not know.
'Mrs Stanhope,' he said. 'I'm sorry if we're disturbing a ceremony
'Don't let it bother you,' she said. 'Pauline will be getting a straightforward Anglican burial. This is just a cleaning up, for my benefit mainly. To most of these people, she was just a gorgio, hardly worth taking your hat off for.'
'But they're helping you,' said Pascoe. 'They took the tent away.'
She smiled grimly.
'When a chovihani asks you the time, you buy a clock,' she said. 'Have you come to bring me the clothes she died in?'
'I'm sorry. We haven't found them yet,' said Pascoe.
She looked worried.
'That's a pity. They should be burnt, above all things.'
'I wouldn't be surprised if they had been already,' said Pascoe.
'You think so? I hope you're right,' she said. 'What is it you're after, then?'
'Is there someone here who's in charge, some sort of leader?'
She left him and went to the main group of gypsies and talked to them for a moment. A short fat man emerged who might have been anything between fifty and seventy and returned with the woman. He was introduced as Silvester Herne and he enquired pleasantly of Pascoe, 'How can I help you, pal?'
Pascoe regarded him dubiously, wondering what his qualifications as leader were. He didn't look much like a gypsy king. Most likely he had been selected as a front man because of some qualities of glibness or shrewdness he possessed. Still, that was their business.
Briefly he explained that he and his men wanted to look around the camp site and talk to the people on it. They had a warrant which entitled them to enter any or all of the caravans and make a search but this might not be necessary.
Herne scratched his nose reflectively.
'Looking for anything special, pal?'
Pascoe thought for a moment, then said slowly and clearly, 'It's the Choker case I'm working on, Mr Herne. Anything relevant to that case is what I'm looking for. Nothing else interests me much. You might tell your people that.'
'OK,' said Herne.
He rejoined the others.
'Trying to keep the peace, Inspector?' said Rosetta Stanhope.
'That's what I'm paid for,' said Pascoe. Tell me, Mrs Stanhope, if any of them knew anything about the Choker, would they keep quiet? Out of loyalty, I mean?'
'Maybe,' she said. 'And maybe I'm not the person to ask. I'm one of them too, remember?'
'Yes, I know,' said Pascoe. 'I also know you came to me offering to help only last Wednesday morning, but since then you've been a lot less keen.'
There was a time to be subtle, a time to push. Dalziel was pushing forward like a traction engine at this moment. Pascoe suspected his direction but he knew he would have to get up a good head of steam himself to head him off.
'Since then my niece got killed,' said Mrs Stanhope sharply. 'Have you forgotten already?'
'No. But I'd have thought that would have sharpened your appetite to help, if anything,' answered Pascoe just as tartly. 'You know Dave Lee's in trouble?'
'I know he's in hospital,' said Rosetta. 'His missus told me that.'
'She's here?'
Mrs Pritchard must have worked even faster than Dalziel anticipated. This hardly boded well for the search.
'Over there, sir,' said Wield.
Pascoe looked and saw a thin, not bad-looking woman with a fading bruise on her left cheek crouching among a gaggle of children, talking to them. She rose as he watched and the children ran off, whooping excitedly at which noise others detached themselves from the group round the fire and galloped after them. Pascoe looked round to get his bearings. To the south was the Aero Club, to the north-west was the arterial road with the sprawl of the Avro Industrial Estate beyond, to the northeast was the suburb of Millhill, while due east would be the river, invisible in a heavily coppiced fold of land some fifty yards beyond the airfield boundary. That was the direction the children were taking. Pascoe, envied them. The combination of sun and fire was bringing the sweat to his brow.
'Let's get to it,’ he said to Wield.
Wield nodded and with calm efficiency set the men to work. He was a good man, thought Pascoe and wondered as he had done before why Wield had stuck at sergeant.
The gypsies seemed indifferent to the search though not so indifferent that there wasn't at least one member of each family present as the caravans were searched in turn.
Silvester Herne moved from one caravan to the next, then back to Pascoe with offers of help so solicitous that they bordered on parody.
It was hopeless, thought Pascoe. Dalziel had struck lucky because because he had taken the Lees completely by surprise and because he didn't give much of a damn for the niceties of the law. No, that was too grudging an assessment. Dalziel like all good cops made his own luck and wasn't afraid of pursuing it no matter what unlikely direction it took him in.
He found himself quite close to Mrs Lee who was standing with arms folded and a twistedly cynical smile on her face.