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you, Miss Stanhope? I mean,  that sign outside! Isn't this just the bottom end of  the entertainment business?'
    He didn't want to sound sneering and the effort  must have shown for the girl was equally and as  obviously restrained in her reply.
    'Aunt Rose is Romany. She's never turned  her back on that all these years she's lived  among gorgios. This used to be mainly a Romany  Fair, Inspector. Now what with one thing and another, the only gypsy presence you get here is  a couple of tatty stalls and a bit of cheap labour  round the fringes. Dave Lee, for instance, his  grandfather . . .'
    'Who's Dave Lee?' interrupted Pascoe.
    'I was just talking to him,' said the girl 'I suppose  he's a kind of cousin of Aunt Rose's. His grandfather might have brought two, three dozen horses  here, being a big man. Now he helps around the  dodgems while his wife sells pegs and bits of lace.  He's not allowed to bring the ponies he still runs  anywhere near the park! This tent is the last real  link between the fair today and what it used to be  for centuries. There was a fortune-teller's tent on  this pitch before there was a police force, Inspector.  Not even the big show-people with their roundabouts dare interfere with that. And for nearly  fifty years it was run by Aunt Rose's grandmother.  When she died four years ago, that looked like the  end. Oh, there were fakes enough who might have  taken over, but the Lees have more pride than that.  So Aunt Rose stepped in. For a couple of weeks a  year she's back in the family tradition, in the old  world.'
    'And which world are you in, Miss Stanhope?'  asked Pascoe.
    'I help as I can,' she said. 'Collect the money, look after the props, do a bit of palm-reading when  Auntie needs a rest. Yes, I did say props. It wasn't a  slip, so don't look so smug. Of course most people  come into a fortune-teller's tent at a fairground for the entertainment. But we take it seriously, that's  the important thing.'
    She spoke defiantly. Pascoe answered seriously,  'I hope so, Miss Stanhope. You spoke of protecting your aunt from exploitation just now. I too am employed to stop people being exploited.'
    She flushed angrily and said, 'Auntie was just  concerned to bring any comfort she could to that  poor woman. We shut up shop here for the afternoon, which lost us money, and Aunt Rose  wouldn't accept any fee from Mrs Sorby. So we're  the only losers, wouldn't you say, Inspector?'
    'There are all kinds of gain, Miss Stanhope,' said Pascoe provocatively. 'I mean in the entertainment  world, there's no such thing as bad publicity, is  there?'
    Now she was really angry.
    'Tell me, Inspector,' she said in a hard, clear  voice, 'I'd say you were a bit younger than Sergeant  Wield, right?'
    'A bit,' he admitted.
    'And yet he is so much pleasanter than you. It  looks to me as if the nastier you are in the police  force, the higher you're likely to get. Right? I bet  I'm right. Goodbye, Inspector!'
    Wait till you meet my boss, thought Pascoe as  he left. You don't know how right you are!
    As he drove away he saw in his rear-view mirror  the man Dave heading back towards the tent.
    Keen for a report on the conversation? he wondered.
    But wasn't everybody fascinated by a connection  with a murder case?
    He put it out of his mind and hurried towards  the station, eager to tell Sergeant Wield he'd got  an admirer.
     

 
    Chapter 4
     
    Alistair Mulgan sipped his tomato juice carefully. He would have preferred a large gin partly because he wasn't paying and partly because his  metabolism seemed to be very sympathetically  inclined towards large gins these days. But the  Northern Bank did not care to have its staff  breathing alcohol over its customers and since  becoming acting manager of the Greenhill branch  after the manager fell under a bus (nothing to  do with alcohol of course) three weeks earlier,  Mulgan had determined to set a perfect example.  Now nearly