I tried to remember which offences you got prosecuted under. I was pretty safe from the Sexual Offences Act (2003), because the test for that is whether your intention is to provoke distress, alarm or outrage. Same with the Public Order Act (1986), because I was not intentionally looking to distress, harm or harass anyone – quite the contrary. Now, if I was a total bastard of a police officer I could probably get me on ‘outraging public decency’ and, judging by the erratic behaviour of some of the oncoming traffic, causing a breach of the peace.

‘There it is,’ said Beverley from behind me. ‘To your left.’

I looked and saw, through the trees that marked the start of the next field along, a scatter of angular shapes and bright colours. It was Travellers of some kind, and when I spotted the signpost to the Leominster Enterprise Park I finally got myself orientated and realised that this was the fairground I’d seen from the terrace of Leominster nick.

I picked up the pace – I wanted a pair of trousers before some passing motorist put us both on YouTube.

There’s no such thing as a single fun fair. The different rides are owned and operated by different families, each of who chooses which pitch they’re heading for next. Each of the families decorate their rides and vehicles with a different livery, each has its own reputation and own history – some dating back centuries, some who drifted into the life during the last recession and never left. They say that if you’re in the know you can walk into a fair and work out who’s there by checking the colours. Unfortunately, I’m not in the know. But Nightingale had told me that a few of the families are part of the great informal mesh of agreements that link horse fair to showground to winter camp to the old ways and byways of medieval Europe.

This looked more like a staging area than an operating fair. I made mental note of the names, Wilson, Carter, Spangoli, Reginald. There were a lot of late Victorian steam rides aimed at the nostalgia market and a couple of genuine steam road locomotives. The nearest was a huge beast of black iron painted crimson and forest green – the name Faerie Queen emblazoned on the side of its canopy.

A middle-aged white woman in an Afghan coat jumped down from the Faerie Queen’s footplate and looked me up and down.

‘Cor,’ she said. ‘I bet you don’t get many of those for a fiver.’

Beverley stepped up to my side and smiled at the woman, who responded with a look of wary recognition.

‘Good morning,’ said Beverley. ‘We’re looking for a bit of assistance.’

The woman nodded. ‘We were told you might turn up,’ she said.

Who by? I wondered.