Send in the Clowns, a Detective Mike Bridger novel (18 page)

He sniffed at
the air around him, the faint odour of precipitation danced around
his nostrils, blown in by small blustery winds preceding a front.
The sky above was blue, but there was a storm coming. He had
weathered many storms in the past and would weather this one as
well. Twenty-five years he had been performing, all of them had
been with Wilsons. He was born into the circus. He had been a good
Clown. He had made Mick laugh. Mick had been there the whole time,
he was a fixture, and he was their boss. Irish Mick, the great,
great grandson of Cyril Wilson, had been the man who was in charge
of his future. They had all trusted him, and even though there were
serious rumours about the financial state of the Circus, he was
supposed to look after them. The Circus was an institution, and
Clowns were part of that.

Now he, and all his brothers, for they were brothers, if not
the real family he craved, had been set adrift amidst the turmoil
of a failing show. Mick was dead; the tent was gone. It had been
reduced too embers by fire and hate, and two beautiful creatures of
god were taken from them. Anthony bloody Gonzales, their own Judas,
was now at the helm of a ship that was sinking fast, and
they
blamed
Maria.
They
were
blind. There would be a reckoning; the Circus took care of their
own. They had failed her once before, they would not do it
again.

He stood
stock-still and stared at the wall, lips pursed in determination
behind the painted smile; he knew what he had to do.

Anthony
Gonzales had searched the caravan from top to bottom and still he
could not find it. The small safe tucked discreetly inside the
cupboard at the rear was also empty. He was sure Mick would have
kept it there. He would not have liked anyone else to see it, not
that it was a big secret between the older members of the troupe.
Most of them knew, or thought they knew, but not Maria. She must
never know. They respected that fact, the Circus was a family, and
families have secrets. You kept a secret to protect others. Mick
had thought so too, at least he used to. He had worked hard all
these years to keep this secret, even though it had hurt him
deeply.

Anthony
recalled the determined fire in Mick’s eyes before he had stormed
out of the caravan that night. He was going to tell her, he had
been sure of it. Only his death had stopped him before it came out,
as Maria had not said anything since. Then drugs could do funny
things to someone’s memory, nothing is ever as it seems with a
cocktail of chemicals for company.

Taking a last look into the small interior of the safe, the
only thing he could see was an old copy of the contract he had
signed with Irish Mick. An unassuming piece of paper naming him,
Anthony James Gonzales, as forty percent shareholder and
business-partner in Wilsons Circus, trading under the name of
Big-Top entertainment holdings limited.

That had been
a great day in his life; he had finally made it to a point that he
could make a difference for his family name again, revive the
legacy. However, the things he had done to get there, things he was
still doing, took a lot of the shine off that memory.

He looked out
of the window at the smoking mess where the tent used to be, a
sinking feeling in his stomach. The Police had just finished their
examination and removed all of the tape that had cordoned off the
area before leaving them with the scorched remains of their
livelihood. The insurance policy, attached to the contract he had
found, was weighing heavy in his hands. He did not want to open it,
but knew he should. Slowly unfolding the document, he stared at the
cover letter. The figure, glaringly obvious, would only cover about
half of a replacement at today’s prices. It was a policy, which
Irish Mick looked to have taken out in the nineteen eighties and
then never reviewed. Typical Mick; he was not the smart business
mind he had portrayed himself to be. Another great fault, he should
have checked himself. Without a tent they were nothing but a
collection of oddities, he had no plan B. This was his life, he
needed the Circus…, or he at least needed the money from it to live
a comfortable retirement. Mick had screwed him again. The dream was
fast slipping away from him, and he could hear the clowns
laughing.

Despite his
growing uneasiness about his future, the sight of the contract
stirred old memories. He had spent half his life at this Circus. So
many years now, he could not remember. Some of those years,
especially at the start, were good years, the years before it had
all changed. He could almost hear Irish Mick laughing from inside
the stainless steel drawer he was now in. He felt a twinge of
guilt, and a bit of sorrow, but could not help thinking, who’s
laughing now, Mick?

The other half of his life, before the Circus, he had been
just floating. He had been an apathetic young teenager. Leaving
school early with no qualifications he drifted from one dead end
job to another. Small towns, big cities, he went everywhere looking
for something to do, but nothing ever seemed to stick. He had had
no plan for his life back then; he had felt restless but did not
know why.

He remembered
he was just shy of his twenty-first birthday when his dad had told
him. Maybe it was the fact that his father had terminal cancer and
wanted to pass it on before he died or maybe he just felt it was
time, he never found out.

The Gonzales
family used to be a proud family, his father had told him; back in
the eighteen hundreds, they were performers, acrobats and tightrope
artists. They could ride horses and do amazing feats of bravery. It
went back generations, people loved them; they were big names
wherever they went. Then two things had happened. In Dunedin, a
newspaper article poured cold water on the Circuses performance and
so the already struggling act imploded on itself as the various
factions fought over who was more important. Apparently, the Clowns
won the argument and the Gonzales family split with the troupe.
There had not been a performer in his family since.

His father
had been a proud man as his father before him had been, but they
were proud in the wrong way. It was that pride that had kept them
from their true calling, and that made them miserable and bitter
old men. He had listened to his father closely as he recounted the
story and in one moment realised what he had been missing in his
own life. His father had died days later without knowing the gift
he had given his son. The story had stayed with him all these
years, feeding his desire to get back his family name and restore
the pride.

Fate had
taken care of the rest after his father’s death, and in some ways,
it helped with the grief, as he had watched the same Wilson’s
Circus from his father’s tale, roll into town soon after the
funeral. Thinking a lot about what his father had told him he
watched as they constructed their world out of nothing, a feeling
growing inside his stomach. This was what he needed, a new world,
and there it was camped on the outskirts of town. It was larger
than life, colourful and loud. There were big personalities and
even bigger animals. The energy was intense and very infectious.
This was something he wanted, something they owed him for the
treatment of his great, great grandfather. After less than a day,
observing the goings on, he had plucked up as much courage as was
possible and gone to see the man in charge.

He remembered
how Mick Wilson was back then, the man, the character they had all
called Irish Mick. He was not much older than he was, but seemed so
much bigger and so much worldlier. His charismatic ways drew him
into the circus world in a way he had not felt before. It was a
calling, he knew it then and he still knew it now, he needed to
perform. It was in the Gonzales blood. Within days, he had become
part of the show.

However, that
was then, he had been a naïve twenty something from a small town,
the Circus had changed him, and now…, he had no idea.

He gave up
looking; the cops probably took it when they searched the caravan
anyway. They took a lot of paperwork with them when they left, but
they would not realise the importance of it, he hoped. The circus
was his; he did not want anyone to take it from him. He had been
with Mick for too long now, he had paid his dues to Mick’s
perversions and wanted his golden ticket.

Bridger put
his cellphone away in his pocket. The pictures he had just seen,
sent to him via text, had been very clear. They showed him and Kate
Atkinson, entering the café’ on Moray Place. One picture saw his
hand placed absently on the small of Kate’s back as they had
negotiated the busy Suits leaving the door. Another picture showed
him and Kate sitting in the window seat side-by-side, looking down
at something and smiling. It all looked very intimate when seen in
the context of a long-range photograph, but it was all very
innocent in his mind. Laura did not think so apparently. The
photographs, accompanied by a large question mark and the simple
phrase ‘We need to talk’ said it all quite clearly.

He mentally
kicked himself; there was nothing to the photographs, he was not
engaged in some illicit deceit with Kate Atkinson, but the person
who would have taken them was a completely different story. The
viewpoint of the photographs were obvious, Jane Little’s office was
just across the road. Was she jealous of Kate? She had said nothing
about it the previous night; everything was exactly as it had been
between them in the past. Simple, uncomplicated, and very open
minded. However, the one reason she would have sent the photographs
to Laura was to cause trouble between them. So much for
uncomplicated, he was at a loss to say why he always ended up
trapped in Jane’s tangled web. He hoped he would be able to
convince Laura of his commitments to resurrecting their failed
marriage when they met this evening, after his impending IPCA
interview.

He looked
around him; the office was unusually quiet; everyone was silently
contemplating the new development in the case and all were unaware
of his troubles. Maria Staverly, arrested for the murder of Michael
Wilson, was sitting in a cell two floors below them. Whether she
actually was the killer was a matter for everyone to come to terms
with, and ultimately, bar a confession, for a jury to
decide.

The evidence
which they had collated and summarised on the white board at the
front of the room did not sit well with Bridger however hard he
tried to fit it onto Maria, and he could see the same doubts etched
into the expressions of his colleagues. It was compelling though,
and he could see most of it convincing a jury she was the guilty
party, but the nagging doubt remained.

“
Jo will be back any minute with the CCTV footage from the
cameras that we haven’t reviewed yet around the crime scene.”
Bridger watched as the heads of his colleagues raised up and eyes
looked in his direction. “As soon as we get that and have a look we
can eliminate the possibility of someone else being involved.” Even
as he said it, he knew instinctively that it would not be that
straight forward, it never was. “Hopefully Maria and Wilson will be
the only ones seen entering the alleyway in the thirty minutes
leading up to the time of death.”

“
What about Coster?” The question had come from Jo as she came
into the office.

“
Yes Jo you’re quite right, Reece Coster is still in the
equation. We know, from the video posted on the P.A.A.I.N site,
that they were together after the murder” Bridger noticed the
protective nuance in her voice towards Maria’s guilt. There was
something between the two girls that he could not quite put his
finger on. “If he was involved, the CCTV footage should show him
entering the Alleyway, either with Maria, or on his own.”

Jo just
shrugged and handed Bridger a thumb drive. “It’s all been put on
here, three cameras that weren’t reviewed at the time.”

Bridger
placed the drive into the side of his computer and clicked on the
play all Icon when it appeared on the bluish background. All eyes
were on the small screen as the images started to
flicker.

The pictures,
which were playing in three small screen boxes stacked on top of
each other, were grey and jumpy. It looked like a typical security
suite showing the various parts of an area that a paid security
guard would monitor, except the pictures did not show private
premises’, they showed public streets. Not designed to capture
clear images of an intruder intent on bad things or the dishonest
actions of errant employees, the camera placed at the entrance to
the accident and emergency ward at the hospital looked like it was
only to monitor traffic flow, and the quality showed that. The
human forms were small and almost impossible to see clearly, so
next to useless. The camera placed on the alleyway entrance next to
the Hercus building across the road looked like it was for a
similar purpose. The footage from the camera at the rear of the
Robbie Burns hotel only was clearer, but only showed an image if
the subject stepped into a small patch of light thrown out by the
weak sodium glow of the only streetlight in the area. It was not
exactly the breakthrough evidence Bridger was expecting, they would
be lucky to identify anyone in the footage even if the camera did
capture them in the area. He continued to scan the flickering
images anyway.