It was the penultimate day of the High Fair and Pascoe found things booming everywhere at Charter Park except in the police caravan where Sergeant Brady, attempting to conceal his copy of Penthouse, confirmed that the public seemed to have run out of even the most useless and irrelevant bits of information.
'Dead as a doornail since I came on after lunch,' he said. 'Nothing at all.'
'Well, don't let it get you down,' said Pascoe.
He went into the fairground to talk with Ena Cooper. As he approached the penny-roll stall he had a sense of something not quite right. It took him a second or two to spot what was wrong. The fortune-teller's tent had disappeared!
'They came and took it down this morning,' said Mrs Cooper. 'Three or four gyppos. Didn't you know?'
Pascoe was non-committal and Mrs Cooper smiled maliciously. But the smile disappeared when she was questioned about Pauline Stanhope again.
No, she hadn't mentioned what she'd been wearing when she left the tent just before mid-day. Why should she? – nobody had asked. Yes, 'Pauline' had been wearing the headscarf, the shawl, and the full-length skirt which were the tools of her trade. No, there'd been nothing funny about the way she walked.
As for seeing anyone go into the tent before the 'girl' left, yes, like she'd said already, there'd been a few that morning, she couldn't say how many.
Pascoe knew there'd been four at least, two pairs of women who had come forward instantly to compete for the honour of a 'last sighting'. The winners, a pair of teenage girls, had attended at eleven-fifteen A.M. and had been very impressed by Madame Rashid's accuracy and optimism.
Pascoe thanked Mrs Cooper and turned away, taking one last look at the circle of anaemic grass which marked where the tent had been. His romantic imagination would have liked to see it as some kind of enchanted ring, haunted by a ghost pleading for the rest that only revenge could give her. But if anything it looked like a green on a miniature golf-course. People strolled across it, uncaring or unaware that their substance was intersecting whatever insubstantial re-run of a murdered girl's last moments might be taking place there. Perhaps one of them would have a vision like those women at Versailles. Certainly it was beginning to feel as if only some supernatural intervention could carry them any further forward. Could Dalziel be persuaded to cross Rosetta Stanhope's palm with silver?
Back at the caravan he dented Brady's phlegm by asking if he'd noticed the scene of the crime being removed. He then left the sergeant With the task of getting together some men to search the fairground for the missing clothes. Not that he had much hope. The Choker would have needed only a second to step out of the dress in the lee of one of the sideshows and the thin cotton fabric would have rolled up to almost nothing. Then, if he had his wits about him which in one sense at least he clearly did, he would have taken the dress far away from the park before dumping it, or even burning it.
And Brady made the prospect even less hopeful by telling him that the rubbish skips had been emptied the previous day by the cleansing department.
'After you've looked round here, you'd better get down to the dump, hadn't you?' suggested Pascoe amiably. 'Just the job for a hot day!'
On his return to the station he was held up at the entrance to the car park by the emergence of an ambulance. He watched it move quietly down the service road, turn into the main traffic stream and was interested to note that only then did its lights start flashing and bells clanging.
Entering, he went straight up to Dalziel's room.
'Where the hell have you been hiding?' demanded the fat man.
'What's up? I saw an ambulance.'
'You don't know? God, you'll go far. Lily-white hands,' sneered Dalziel. 'They've just carted Lee off to hospital, all right?'
Pascoe was not offended by his superior's tone. He'd grown accustomed to his style and besides, he could see the fat man was worried.
'What happened?'
'Nothing. I had a few words with him. He just kept on moaning about this pain. I thought he was shooting the shit so I…'
'Yes, sir,' prompted Pascoe.
'I just yelled at him,' said Dalziel. 'What do you think I did? Next thing, he's lying on the floor. Well, then I called the quack. He says it could be appendix, he's not sure. Those bastards never are! So we got an ambulance.'
'You were alone when you questioned him, sir?'
'Yes,' said Dalziel.
Pascoe thought for a moment. He'd never seen his superior quite so ill at ease before.
'You'll have called the ACC, sir?' he said.
'That twat! Why should I want to call him?'
'Before someone else does,' said Pascoe. 'Excuse me.'
He went downstairs. Wield was ahead of him, studying the logged entries of the Lees' admission.
'Trouble?' said the sergeant.
'If we all do our duty, we'll come to no harm,' said Pascoe. 'Let's have a look at the chimney.'
He whistled when he saw the book.
'That's a long time.'
'And he was complaining from when he arrived. Said he'd been punched,' said Wield.
'The woman, she's still here?' asked Pascoe. 'Jesus! Get her out, get her down to the hospital, you go with her. And hang about there. Take a WPC to keep an eye on her, you watch him. They're both in police custody still, right?'
Back in Dalziel's office he found the fat man talking on the phone.
'Yes, sir,' he was saying. 'Both of them. She may be an accomplice.'
Pascoe scribbled on a bit of paper and passed it over. Dalziel glanced at it. His tone became injured.
'Of course, sir,' he said. 'She's at the hospital now. With one of my sergeants and a WPC. We're not without feelings, sir.'
He winked conspiratorially at Pascoe who felt at the same time relieved and uneasy. He was willing to close ranks a bit, but he had no intention of letting loyalty loom larger than legality. That was all right for the public schools, not so hot for the public service.
'That's all right then,' said Dalziel, replacing the receiver. 'Thanks, Peter.'
'For what? I was just tidying up,' said Pascoe.
He must have stressed the particle more than he intended.
'As opposed to covering up?' said Dalziel. 'Not to worry, lad. I won't drag you to the scaffold with me! Or mebbe that bugger Lee won't come out of the anaesthetic eh? They're mostly black buggers down there, operate with assegais!'
He roared with laughter.
'Or mebbe he'll be too busy answering charges to make them,' he continued.
'I hope you haven't got him lined up for the Stanhope killing, sir,' said Pascoe, glad to be back at the job in hand. 'I think you'll find he's about nine inches too tall.'
'Eh?'
Briefly Pascoe sketched his interview with Rosetta Stanhope.
'Christ, this should have been spotted earlier,' said Dalziel angrily. 'This has been bloody sloppy. And it's not the only thing either.'
In his turn he related the news about Brenda Sorby's money and the suspected tie-up with the notes found in Lee's caravan.
'What made you look in the flour jar, sir?'
'It was out of place up there with his valuables,' said Dalziel. 'Silly bugger probably didn't like to leave it in the kitchen where it'd have been inconspicuous but might have tempted his missus!'
'You don't think she knew about it?'
'Who knows?' said Dalziel. 'It'll be interesting to see whose prints are on the notes, if those idle buggers at the lab ever get round to looking at them! Whether she knows or not, Lee's got his own subtle methods to keep her
