Meanwhile he had ensured that everyone in any kind of craft on the canal that night was traced and interviewed. All had been in company, all reasonably alibied, none had heard anything. In any case the signs were that the girl had been put into the water from the bank, not a boat. There were traces of mud on her dress corresponding to that in a shallow groove in the bank close by the place where the body was found.

Pascoe glanced at his watch. Brooding time over, he decided. There was work to be done. He began to retrace his steps.

The fairground was livelier now. Business wouldn't really get under way till much later in the morning, but meantime there were things to be done, machinery to be checked and oiled, canvas covers removed, brass to be polished. At side-stalls like the rifle-range and the hoopla there were the gimcrack prizes to be set out, gun-sights to check in case they had deviated to accuracy, and hoopla rings in case they had stretched to go over the whisky bottle.

By the fortune-teller's tent a young woman in jeans and a yellow suntop was talking to a man in a tartan shirt and brown cords, gaitered militarily above ex-army boots. He was about forty with the knitted brow and dark craggy good looks of a Heathcliff.

They looked at Pascoe as he passed and the man said something.

A moment later Pascoe stopped and turned as the woman's voice called, 'Excuse me!' She had started after him. The man watched for a moment and then strode away towards the trailer park.

'Aren't you one of the policemen?' said the girl. Anyone under twenty-five now qualified as a girl, Pascoe realized ruefully. This one certainly did; fresh young skin, clear brown eyes, luxuriant auburn hair escaping from the green and white spotted bandanna which she had tied around it.