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swept over her as if she wasn’t a real person at all.
    ‘Detective Sergeant Mill, something’s come up.’ He spoke respectfully but briskly.
    ‘What? You can talk in front of Sister Joan.’ The other intercepted a discreet glance.
    ‘I went over to the Romany camp to check on the men getting the names of the children whose fingerprints we need …’
    ‘Hardly necessary, Barratt. The two I sent are local men who know the Romanies and can persuade them to bring the kids into the station.’
    ‘It was on my way, sir,’ Barratt said stiffly. ‘It wasn’t my intention to exceed my duty.’
    ‘Of course not. Go on.’
    Sergeant Barratt gave Sister Joan another brief glance and went on.
    ‘One of the men was on his way down to the station when I arrived. The Romanies found a body, it seems. They were all for packing up and leaving the district, not wanting to be involved with police business I daresay. Anyway our men arrived and persuaded them otherwise.’
    ‘Never mind that. What about a body?’
    ‘There’s a hut near the camp where they stack stuff from time to time. Stuff that probably fell off the back of a lorry. The girl was in there, huddled up in the corner on a pile of straw. Wearing a white dress with a wreath of flowers on her head.’
    ‘Identified yet?’ Only a slight tightening of the mouth betrayed his superior’s reaction.
    ‘One of the gypsies – sorry, sir, Romanies, recognized her. Young girl who works in a bread shop over on the new industrial estate. Name’s Tina Davies.’
    ‘Is she still there?’
    ‘They had the sense not to try and move her, sir. She was in the same position as the other – strangled by what appears to be the same method.’
    ‘You’ve left someone there, of course.’
    ‘Yes, sir. I’ve got them cordoning off the immediate area. I drove down and parked round the corner. Easier to turn round and drive back.’
    ‘Right. I’ll come with you. Sister Joan, can you delay your soup for half an hour?’
    She had known the request was coming, had steeled herself against it.
    ‘We want you to look at the girl and tell us if she’s in the same position as Valerie Pendon was. If she is – we have a harder case on our hands than we even thought we had. Can you follow us in your car?’
    ‘Yes, of course, Detective Sergeant Mill.’
    Following him she felt the inevitability of fate close round her. Like it or not she seemed to be involved.

Four
    The Romany camp had existed since time immemorial high on the moor where gorse and bracken created a barrier between the mundane world and the secret enclosed existence of the travelling people. Sister Joan, who had taught several of the Romany children and was accepted by them, if not with friendship at least with tolerance, parked her car at the edge of the clearing and joined the two detectives who were heading for the shed not many yards off. Outside it a police constable stood guard, while another was engaged in marking off a large square with string and pegs, his progress watched by a small knot of men, women and children. A couple of lurcher dogs barked furiously, then slunk away as someone shied a stone at them.
    ‘This is a bloody awful business, ain’t it, Sister?’
    A loose-limbed, rangy fellow with a cap perched at the back of his curly black head and his sleeves, rolled up to reveal brawny, tattooed arms greeted her.
    ‘Padraic Lee, how are you?’ Shaking hands she was aware of Sergeant Barratt’s sidelong glance and lifted eyebrow.
    ‘The better for seeing you again, Sister Joan, and that’s a fact,’ he declared. ‘Time you was back home I was saying to my Madge only the other day. If you’d been around they wouldn’t’ve dared close the school. My Madge was that upset about it. The girls was learning ever so nicely with you and now I’m supposed to get them on that dratted bus every day and me with a business to run.’
    ‘We must all do what the education authorities decide,’ Sister Joan