The Chief Inspector's Daughter (28 page)

At the back of the fairground site, however, behind a convenient hedge, was a mobile control-room with more uniformed police standing by. The drug squad also operated from here. It was not that the people who smoked cannabis at the fair gave any trouble. But they were knowingly breaking the law, and members of the drug squad, matey in jeans and longish hair, wandered round among the crowds looking for the tell-tale sharing of pipes and hand-rolled cigarettes.

This year, however, the policing of Oxlip Fair was far more serious. The profile was still low, but there were an unusual number of police cars parked out of sight beside the control room. Chief Inspector Quantrill had called a briefing for 9.30 on the morning of Easter Saturday, the opening day of the fair, and a dozen CID men and officers in plain clothes attended it.

Most of the briefing was done by Sergeant Tait, unusually scruffy in faded jeans and an old leather jerkin that he'd borrowed for the job. He described the man who was wanted in connection with the murder of Jasmine Woods, and passed round photofit pictures. Tait had already spent two days at Oxlip under cover, purporting to lend a hand with the setting up of the fair, and he had chatted to the organizers and helpers who had been camped for the past fortnight in a field opposite the site.

‘They're not people who read newspapers or watch television,' he explained. ‘They know nothing about the murder, or the fact that we're looking for Smith. His name didn't mean anything to them, so we can assume that he isn't in any way connected with the running of the fair. I got a look at the lists of stallholders and entertainers, and Smith's name isn't among them either.

‘But if he comes to the fair, I don't think it will be as a day visitor. The visitors are mostly people who are in conventional jobs. They put on homespun as a lark, and they come in their own transport because that's the only way they can get here. But Smith ditched his motor bike on the day the murder was discovered. He can't come unless someone gives him a lift, and anyone who does so is likely to be as committed as Smith himself to unconventional living. Jasmine Woods, the murdered woman, met him here last year when he was trying to sell leather. I think that's where we're likely to find him this weekend, at one of the stalls.'

A young detective constable pointed out that Tait had said that Smith's name wasn't on the list of stallholders.

‘Right. But this isn't a conventional market, it's a weekend sleep-in as well. The stallholders don't have to camp across the road, they're allowed to sleep on the site to keep an eye on their wares. They bring their families and friends and animals with them, and they live in shelters that they put up behind their stalls. And as there are over 300 stalls, it's rather like a medieval town, huddled and unhygienic. One carrier of typhoid at a food stall and there'll be a major epidemic …'

Martin Tait had suffered, during the past two days. He had hated living in the discomfort of a pup tent that one of the police cadets had lent him. He had forced himself to be useful and friendly, fetching and carrying and knocking in nails and helping to hoist a maypole, eating curious stews, drinking home-brewed beer from home-made mugs, and listening to half-baked philosophy. But the longer he stayed, the more the ethos of the fair irritated him.

Most of the participants were about his own age – he'd recognized a couple of contemporaries from his schooldays at Framlingham – but he found it impossible to identify with them. The only son of a strong-minded, ambitious widow, he had nothing in common with people who wanted to reject the values of contemporary society. The idea of being poor by choice, of spending his time growing vegetables or playing a flute or doing leatherwork appalled him. He deplored the fact that the skills and hard work he had seen going into the creation of the fair were not put to regular, socially acceptable use.

‘And since the fairground is rather like a town,' he continued, raising his voice above the muttered disenchantment of the assembled police officers, ‘that's how I suggest we treat it. I've made a map of the site—' he passed round photostat copies ‘– not guaranteed accurate, but near enough. And I've divided it into beats, so that each of us can concentrate on getting to know the resident population of our area. Without, of course, letting them know that we're their friendly neighbourhood coppers. Most of them like to think they're anti-fuzz, though they'll scream for us soon enough if they're in any trouble.'

The policemen cheered up at the thought of having something definite to work on, and began to study their maps. Quantrill left Tait to finish the briefing and went outside. The fair was not yet officially open, but the site already looked crowded and the traffic police were working their arms as busily as bookmakers at a race meeting.

Cars were converging on Oxlip from all over the region. The fields beyond the site had been designated as official car-parks, at 25p a time, but as usual a good many motorists, intent on being medieval and simplistically equating that with individual freedom, preferred to try to avoid paying by parking on the roadside verges. The road that ran past the site had already been reduced to half its width, and a police motorcyclist reported a tail-back as far as Bungay.

As soon as the cars stopped, their drivers and passengers tried to abandon the twentieth century. Nearly all of them got out wearing home-made costumes of some kind: tights dyed to make men's hose, hessian jerkins, unisex surtouts in various colours and materials. Some men were dressed as monks or friars, beggars or Robin Hoods. Many of the girls were in long dresses, and pointed hats of the kind recommended for wear by fifteenth-century damsels imprisoned in castle turrets.

Quantrill felt uncomfortably conspicuous as he stood watching the visitors enter the site. He had dressed casually, in an old pair of tweed trousers and his fishing sweater, but he knew that his hair was too neatly cut and his chin too closely shaven. He was conscious of looking both unacceptably orthodox and, at forty-six, older than almost anyone else on the site apart from one or two other coppers. The majority of men were about Gilbert Smith's age. Nearly all of them were bearded, and half the beards in sight were as thin and medium brown as Tait had described Gilbert Smith's.

‘Trouble with these buggers is, they all look the same.' PC Ronald Timms, trying to be inconspicuous in dark-grey flannel trousers and navy-blue anorak, but every inch a policeman behind his lugubrious moustache, had come up behind the Chief Inspector.

Quantrill agreed, and began to move on. Together, he and Ron Timms were a dead giveaway. ‘Hope you've got a good beat, Ron,' he said pointedly.

Unexpectedly, PC Timms chuckled. ‘I hear it includes the beer tent …' He gave his moustache an anticipatory wipe with the knuckle of his forefinger.

‘I'll know where to come at lunch-time, then,' Quantrill told him. He walked away, climbing a grassy hill to view the site from the highest point.

The fifteen-acre meadow where the fair was held was too small now for the numbers involved, but otherwise ideal. It was glebe land, and a footpath ran across it from the village to the church, which provided an appropriately medieval backdrop. The church was small, fourteenth century without any later external additions, and built of flint with a characteristically East Anglian round tower and a thatched roof. The rough grass of the surrounding churchyard was bright with primroses and daffodils that had sprung up among the leaning, lichened gravestones like a renewed promise of resurrection.

Part of the meadow, between the village and the churchyard, was level but the rest of the site undulated, rising to the hillock on which Quantrill was standing. Trees and bushes grew here and there in the meadow and a chestnut crowned the top of the hill, thrusting its pale fuzzy opening leaves into the clear blue of the sky. All round the meadow were hedges, some white with blackthorn blossom, some purple with trailing brambles, some yellow with willow, some bursting into green.

But the colours of spring, lit palely by the sun, were eclipsed by the colours of the fair. Spuriously medieval or not, Oxlip Fair had a look of joy and gaiety. Poles had been hoisted aloft, and from them streamed ribbons and flags and banners contrived from old sheets and army surplus parachute silk dyed in brilliant colours. In the centre of the meadow was a great maypole, nearly seventy feet tall, garlanded with blossoms and greenery. Giant kites, birdshaped, flew towards the sun.

And then there was the sound of music, coming nearer as a costumed procession entered the meadow led by a drum and a fiddle and a tambourine. Someone read a proclamation at the foot of the maypole. A wicker basket was thrown open and a flock of pigeons exploded into the air, vying for height with the banners, the maypole, the church tower, the chestnut tree, the kites and eventually the skylarks before setting course for their lofts. Oxlip Fair had begun.

There was colour and movement everywhere, but not the mechanical movement and neon-lit garishness of a modern fairground. Informal entertainment was provided by clowns and tumblers, by jugglers and minstrels and an early music consort, by puppeteers and morris dancers and anyone else who felt sufficiently extrovert to have a go. Stages had been set up in different parts of the meadow for drama and music, and fir poles planted beside each stage were lively with banners. Silken dragons flapped over one, a castle painted on tarpaulin towered behind another, a third was sited in the gaping mouth of a bamboo dragon whose cardboard scales were held together by orange baler twine.

‘All very jolly,' said Quantrill to his sergeant, who had climbed the hill to join him. It was the first time they had met since Wednesday, when they had found that there were no traces of blood in Paul Pardoe's car, and that they could get no further information from either Jonathan Elliott or George Hussey. Digging operations at Yeoman's had uncovered nothing, but the scene-of-crime team was still searching the house and grounds. In the absence of any new leads, Quantrill had since been making enquiries about Jasmine Woods in her previous home at Thaxted, while Tait had come to set up the Oxlip operation.

‘Or it would be jolly,' Quantrill amended, ‘if we weren't on a murder investigation. That was a good briefing you did, Martin. I like your idea of treating the place as a town. Trying to spot one man among 100,000 would be hopeless otherwise.'

‘Let's hope it works,' said Tait.

‘It had better. We've got to find Smith.'

‘Did you get any useful information about him from Alison, sir?'

Quantrill chewed his lower lip. Then, ‘I haven't seen her,' he said abruptly. ‘We haven't heard anything more since that telephone call on Tuesday.'

‘
What
? But I thought—'

‘I know. That's what I thought, that she'd be home within a couple of days – or at least that she'd ring again. It's not just fatherly concern, though there's that too, God knows, but we
need
her. We need her evidence. I haven't so far found anything significant about Jasmine Woods at Thaxted, and Patsy Hopkins hasn't yet been able to get anything coherent out of the ex-secretary, Anne Downing – so we must talk to Alison. And we want to know in detail what she saw when she went into the room where the woman was murdered, so that we can compare it with what we found ourselves. We know that Smith took at least two netsuke, but we don't know whether that was on the night of the murder or the next morning, after Alison found the body. So her evidence is going to be vital – and Smith knows that as well as we do.'

‘There may be a perfectly simple explanation,' said Tait. ‘Perhaps she just wanted to stay on with her friends over the holiday weekend.' He thought about it. ‘Would she be likely to come here, to Oxlip?'

Quantrill shook his head impatiently. ‘No. Alison isn't interested in this kind of caper, she's a sensible girl. That's why I can't understand why we've heard nothing more from her. I know she was upset over the murder, it stands to reason. But she must have got over the shock by now. And she's alert, she reads the papers and watches the television news, so she'll know we want information about Smith. She's usually very considerate. I'm sure she wouldn't go on keeping us in suspense, not of her own free will …'

The phrase lingered on the air as Quantrill and Tait avoided each other's eyes, conscious of its corollary.

Alison had begun to grow more accustomed to life at Mill Farm. Despite occasional tensions the atmosphere was friendly; she would have found it relaxing if it were not for the physical contact in which the family indulged. Everyone touched and hugged and kissed everyone else with casual affection, and Alison found it alien and embarrassing. She tightened up instinctively when any adult members of the family came anywhere near her. It was not easy for her to identify with any of the other women, since she was not into yoga or vegetarianism or spinning, but she was glad to spend the time helping with the children and the animals.

When her conscience had nagged her to walk up to the village on Tuesday and telephone her mother, she had fully intended to ring home again in a couple of days; but the days drifted by and she let them go. The thought of home, and of the inevitable questioning that awaited her, brought so much stress that, having done her duty, she deliberately tried to put home out of her mind. She pulled a shutter down over it, as she had pulled a shutter over her discovery of the murder.

But although she refused to think of that morning when she had found Jasmine's body, she could not forget the fact of her friend's death. It was too recent, too raw. There would be occasions when it slipped from her memory and she could feel, for a few moments, almost happy; but then it would come back, hitting her like a physical blow, stopping her in the middle of what she was doing while her body clenched with pain. At other times the misery would creep up on her slowly, like cold dark water rising in a lock. She would carry on mechanically with her tasks, but she would be unable to stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks while she worked. And all the time, in Quantrill family tradition, she kept her emotions to herself.