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at Eltering said something about you searching for a stolen car on the old airfield?’
    ‘Yes, Sergeant. I searched for it just after commencing my shift. It wasn’t there.’
    ‘You sure?’
    ‘Yes, Sergeant!’ I snapped the answer. ‘I searched every possible place. The airfield was deserted.’
    ‘Good, I thought you’d have done a thorough job.’
    ‘Is there a problem?’ I asked.
    ‘It’s just that Eltering Police Station got one or two calls during the night from residents at Stovensby. They reckoned cars were running round the airfield all night. They reported seeing lights and hearing engines in the fog. Eltering’s sending acar to have a look in daylight – apparently, a road-traffic car attempted to investigate last night, but turned back because of dense fog.’
    ‘I’ve just come from there, Sergeant,’ I decided to tell him. ‘I did a final search myself, in daylight with the fog thinning. I saw nothing – that was only half an hour ago.’
    ‘They must have imagined it, Rhea. So, nothing else to report, eh?’
    ‘No, Sergeant,’ I said with determination.
    ‘Good, then sleep well,’ and they left me.
    It was a long, long time before I returned to Stovensby Airfield and I never ventured there during a fog!
    Mind, there were times when I wondered how those wartime pilots had coped with these Stovensby pea-soupers. Perhaps they had never become airborne, pretending instead to fly upon long circuitous missions into enemy territory?
     
    There was another occasion when a duty trip in the little van caused something of a headache, and again it involved a journey which would certainly have caused Sergeant Blaketon to consult his book of rules. Happily, he never learned of this particular mishap.
    Like so many memorable incidents, this one happened through a chance conversation. I was on patrol in the mini-van with instructions to deliver a package to a member of the Police Committee who lived on the edge of my beat. The package had come from the Chief Constable via our internal mail system and I was the final courier in this postal routine. I think it contained a selection of local statistics and pamphlets required for a crime prevention seminar in which she was to be involved. She was out when I arrived, but I spotted a gardener at work in the grounds of her spacious home and he told me to leave the mail in the conservatory. She’d find it there, he assured me. He pointed me towards the door and then, eager for a moment’s respite, asked me how my family and I were settling in. I did not know the man, but saw this as yet another example of how the public knows the affairs of their village constable!
    As I’d been at Aidensfield for a year or two by this time, I was able to say we were very happy and enjoying both the area andthe work.
    ‘Got the garden straight, have you?’ he asked with real interest, and perhaps a little professional curiosity.
    ‘Not really,’ I had to admit. I love a well tended garden which comprises vegetables, flowers and shrubs, but I never seemed to have the time to create the garden of my dreams. Mary, however , in spite of coping with four tiny children and a hectic domestic routine, did manage to spend some time tending the garden.
    I told him all this and he smiled.
    ‘Tell her not to be frightened to ask if she needs owt,’ he offered. ‘Cuttings, seeds, bedding plants, that sort o’ thing.’
    ‘Thanks, it’s good of you,’ I responded.
    ‘Well, we’ve often a lot o’ spare stuff and t’missus is happy to give bits and pieces to t’locals.’ By ’t’missus’ he meant his employer. ‘You’ve only to ask.’
    It was at this point that I remembered Mary asking me to keep an eye open for horse manure during my patrols; she’d mentioned it some days ago and it had slipped my mind until now.
    ‘That reminds me,’ I said half apologetically, ‘she did ask me to look out for some horse manure. That was ages ago.’
    ‘Ah, we don’t have any