Pascoe introduced himself.
'Well, ain't you a change from them other mumply old hedgecrawlers that keep talking to me,' she said, looking at him with mock admiration. 'A good-looking one at last. Theys'll try anything!'
'I'm pleased your husband is out of danger, Mrs Lee,' said Pascoe.
She looked at him with blank indifference.
'Unfortunately he's not out of trouble,' pursued Pascoe. 'Not unless he can explain how that money and the watch and ring came into his possession.'
'Which money? Which watch and ring?' she asked.
Pascoe sighed.
'Look, there's no one can hear us now, Mrs Lee,' he said. 'Dave's not a very good husband to you, is he? I mean, a fine-looking woman like you can't much enjoy being knocked around. Just a couple of words now, just a hint, and we could get him out of your life for a bit. No need to worry about the money, married woman with kids and a husband in gaol, you'd probably get more out of the social security than Dave makes in a moderate week. We'd see the forms were filled in properly, all that sort of thing. No one has to suffer these days!'
She didn't answer but fixed her gaze over his shoulder. Pascoe looked round and saw Rosetta Stanhope talking with a woman who didn't look like a gypsy.
'What's the matter?' asked Pascoe. 'Are you frightened of Mrs Stanhope? Frightened because she's a chovihani?'
'Chovihani? Her?' snorted the woman. 'She's nowt but a didikoi, a posh-ratt. Coming here from her little house and expecting us to treat her like a traveller still after fifty years. She even smells like a gorgio!
Pascoe recognized the insulting terms for half-breed, but was less than convinced of the sincerity of this expression of fearless contempt. It seemed to him more based on deep resentment than genuine scorn.
'Mrs Lee?'
Pascoe turned and groaned inwardly as he recognized the woman who had joined them. This was Pritchard, the solicitor. The last thing he wanted at the moment was an antagonistic legal eye peering over his shoulder.
'You don't have to talk to this man, Mrs Lee,' continued Pritchard in clear tones resonant with upper-class certainty. 'Certainly you don't have to answer any questions he might put to you without benefit of legal advice.'
'Doesn't the Law Society have some convention about not touting for business?' wondered Pascoe aloud.
'You're Pascoe, aren't you?' she said. 'I've heard about you. If protecting women against the police means touting for business then I'll do it. And if the Law Society objects, then they can go and screw themselves.'
'It's your licence,' said Pascoe. 'Excuse me.'
He went away to urge Wield and his men to accelerate their search so that it could be completed before Ms Pritchard turned her crusading eye in their direction. Wield said thirty minutes and Pascoe, pointing out Pritchard, said that he was taking a stroll down to the river and that if the solicitor did start sticking her nose in, she should be met by a display of subordinate blankness and referred to him. By the time she found him, with luck their business would be over.
It was easy to find the exit hole in the boundary fence. During the hot weather the children's feet had beaten a distinct path towards it. Folding back the wire, Pascoe squeezed through and within a few paces had dropped out of sight of the encampment. He could hear the children at play – cries of delight, excitement, abuse and fear accompanied by much splashing of water. Forcing his way through a tight-knit clump of sallows, he reached the bank.
It wasn't much of a river, at its widest no more than fifty or sixty feet, though the farmer who owned the huge field of turnips which lay on the further bank must have been glad to have this barrier between him and the encampment. How many turnips could a swimming child carry? wondered Pascoe.
He sat down on the bank where the hungry water had eaten away a crescent of earth to form a small bay with a deep still pool. The children were playing a little further upstream, too absorbed in their games to take notice of Pascoe. He watched them with pleasure, delighting in their easy movements, their lithe brown bodies, their undiluted animal spirits, and tried to recall when last he had been capable of such total submersion in present joy. Not counting sex, that was; though even in the great gallop of sex there was all too often that little slave clinging to the back of the chariot and whispering in his ear, remember you are you.
A pair of small boys detached themselves from the other children and came running down the bank to peer speculatively into the pool above which Pascoe sat. They were young enough to be stark naked – gypsies have extremely rigid ideas about carnal exposure – and were urging each other to plunge in.
One of them looked up and saw Pascoe and spoke to the other. Pascoe smiled amiably at them and, convinced he was harmless, they returned to the debate till another older boy, spotting them from the river, floated on his back and shouted angrily at them. Pascoe caught the word mokadi repeated several times. This he knew was the Romany term for taboo or unclean, and at first he assumed, not without hurt, that the expression was meant for himself.
But observation of the two naked children told him he was wrong. It was not himself but the edge of the bank they were withdrawing from with expressions of uncertainty and trepidation. In fact their retreat brought them closer to Pascoe's position and he addressed them gently.
'Hey, chawies,' he said. 'What's the matter? Don't you like to swim? Here, I'll give this to the one who makes the biggest splash!'
He held up a fifty-pence piece so that it glinted in the sun.
The boys chattered excitedly, then ran to the bank a little way upstream.
'No. Here,' commanded Pascoe, pointing to the pool.
They shook their heads.
'Oh all right,' said Pascoe, rising and strolling towards them. 'Here will do.'
He squatted down alongside them.
'But why's that pool mokadi?' he asked. 'It's a good place to swim. Why is it mokadi?'
He held up the coin as he spoke. One of the boys, the younger, took a step backwards, then turned and ran towards his friends. The other looked as if he might follow instantly.
Pascoe instinctively reached out and grasped his arm lightly.
'Do you not want the money, son?' he asked.
There was movement behind him.
'Chikli muskro! screamed a furious voice. 'Sodding dirty old queer!'
Pascoe looked up. It was Mrs Lee. Behind her trailed Miss Pritchard and Sergeant Wield. He let go of the child and began to rise, but he was still at the crouch and unbalanced when the gypsy woman hit him. It wasn't really a blow, just a simple shove with both arms.
But it was enough to set him teetering on the edge of the river and it took hardly more than another gentle touch to send him plunging over.
The water was green and deep close by the bank. He came up and saw the children's heads craning over the edge to view this fascinating spectacle. He grabbed at the bank but his fingers slipped in the wet clay and down he went once more.
This time when he surfaced, he lay back and floated. The small brown faces were still there, big-eyed, watching. And beyond them, high in the summer blue sky, slowly wheeling like huge birds of prey, black crosses in the aureole of the sun, he saw the gliders.
The water was filling his clothes, pulling him down. But he was in no danger. Wield's strong grip was on his forearm. And as he was dragged gasping from the pool that was mokadi, he found himself looking up at Rosetta Stanhope and he wondered how an English judge would react to the production of a dead witness by proxy in a murder trial.
Chapter 21
Michael Conrad was at first puzzled, then rather frightened when, arriving home that Saturday lunch-time, he found a policeman waiting outside his shop. His relief was great when he realized that the policeman's presence did not mean a break-in, nor did it have anything to do with the three litres of cognac he had just smuggled in from Corfu.