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.
But his shock on hearing of Brenda Sorby's death was deep and genuine. He had not heard the news before he left on Friday night and it was a point of honour with him not to read an English paper while on holiday abroad.
Yes, he knew her well. Didn't she often serve him in the bank? Yes, he had seen her that Thursday lunch- time, just before he closed. She had collected and paid for a gentleman's gold signet ring. That was the ring there on the Superintendent's desk, no doubt. And the watch too. A gift for her young man. A nice watch for the money and he had given her a good discount because he liked her. Her engagement ring he had admired. Not an expensive stone and the setting… well, he would have been ashamed to sell such a setting but it was no business of his to dull a young girl's happiness so he had admired it as the most perfect of rings and taken her to the door and waved goodbye to her.
And would never see her again.
His eyes filled with tears and he had to blow his nose before he could sign his statement.
'Grand,' said Dalziel rubbing his hands together. 'Now for Lee. Peter, we should put you back on the beat. I'd forgotten how pretty you looked in uniform.'
Pascoe had been provided with a blue shirt and a pair of uniform trousers while his own gear dried off. He had just escaped from a neighbouring interview room which Lee's wife, four of her children, Silvester Herne, two policemen and Ms Pritchard had turned into a Bedlam cell.
'And I'd forgotten how itchy these trousers were,' he answered, 'Look, sir, I haven't got much sense yet out of that lot. They keep jabbering away at each other in Anglo-Romany every time I think I'm getting somewhere, but here's how it's looking to me…'
Dalziel put a huge finger to his broad lips.
'Later,' he said. 'Lee'll tell us all or I'll personally undo his stitches. That Pritchard thing's still there, is she?'
Pascoe nodded.
'Right,' said Dalziel. 'We'll send Wield in, tell him to be a bit aggressive towards the woman and the kids. That should keep her busy while we do our spot of hospital visiting!'
