by David Haynes
Ben looked at him and then at the book. “Who does it belong to?”
“Just open it, Mr Night.”
Ben wanted to tell him to stop issuing orders and throw him out, but he wanted to know what was going on first. And there was the question of whether it was appropriate to throw a policeman out of your house. He opened the book and saw his handwriting. It was in slightly faded black ink but it was unmistakable.
The message said, ‘To Harvey, keep reading and I’ll keep writing!’ It was followed by his signature.
“Do you know how many books I’ve signed, DC Kelly? Hundreds, probably thousands. This could have been twenty years ago. Why do you expect me to remember this particular one?”
Kelly fished in his briefcase and handed another edition of Clownz to him.
“What about this?” He looked smug as if he’d caught Ben out somehow.
He took the book. It was another edition of Clownz, a later one with less lurid artwork on the cover. He opened it before he was told to. There was another inscription from him.
‘To my biggest Nightmare, Harvey!’
He handed the books back to Kelly whose grin was growing by the second. Kelly put them on his knee.
“Are these evidence? Exhibits?” Ben asked.
Kelly took a sip of his coffee, licked his lips and replied, “Not yet.”
“What does that mean?” The drink had taken the edge off his throat but his head was pounding, sending waves of pain into his eyes.
Kelly put the books in his case. “There are three more just like it. Do you want to see the others?” He paused and wiped a dribble of coffee from his lips. “It might refresh your memory?”
“Like I said, I sign hundreds of books every year, sometimes more. There’s no way I’d remember one person out of all of those.” Although he doubted he would forget Fleur in a hurry.
“You’re sweating, Mr Night.”
Ben wiped his brow. It felt cold and clammy. “It’s just a temperature, that’s all.” He could feel Kelly scrutinising him. He hadn’t done anything wrong and he didn’t know this ‘Harvey’, but he was starting to feel like he was in trouble.
“Is that all it is?” Kelly asked.
“What? What exactly are you trying to say?” He was starting to lose his temper now.
Kelly closed his case. “Nothing, I was just asking...”
“Are you finished, because I need to go back to bed.” He cut the detective off before he could spout any more rubbish.
“You’re absolutely sure you don’t know him?”
Ben stood up and felt dizziness wash over him. “I’m quite sure. Why he chose to paint his face that way is beyond me. I take it you haven’t read Clownz?”
“Not my thing.” Kelly finished his coffee, stood up and handed the cup to Ben.
“Well, let’s just say Sparkles wasn’t exactly a kid’s best friend.” He started walking toward the front door. Kelly followed behind.
“Neither was Harvey Newman, or his alter ego, Bingo The Clown.” Kelly raised his eyebrows.
“He wasn’t?”
“Watch the news, Mr Night.”
Ben opened the door for him. “That’s it then?”
Kelly walked away. “We’ll be in touch.”
Ben watched him waddle to his car. What would they be in touch about? There was nothing else to say. The wind whipped across the open fields and sent an icy chill into the house. As a powerful shiver rippled through his body, he grunted and slammed the door.
Kelly was an obnoxious man, regardless of his job. It was sad that a clown with an unfortunate name had been murdered but Ben didn’t know him, no matter how many books he’d signed over the years. If someone had turned up to a book signing dressed as a clown he might remember, but even then, aside from Fleur he seldom had anything to do with any of them.
He walked back to the lounge and turned the television on. It took him a while to find the news channel, but once he did he could see exactly what Kelly meant about Newman not being a friend to children.
“Police have confirmed today that there have been a number of reports of abuse at the hands of murdered clown Harvey Newman. The cases are believed to stretch back over some thirty years. Police are attempting to identify further victims and are urging people to come forward if they have ever booked Newman, who worked under the name ‘Bingo The Clown’, to appear at any events. Newman was...”
Ben switched it off. He felt sick. Very, very sick. He had shaken hands with Newman on at least five occasions. What had those hands done? He closed his eyes and felt the room revolve around him. Had Newman got his sick inspiration from him? Had he based his own actions on those of the fictional clown? It was vile. The fictional Sparkles had eaten kids’ brains, he hadn’t... he hadn’t...
Was the room spinning faster? He needed to go and lie down upstairs. He needed to sleep and to forget about Harvey Newman and Sparkles.
He put his hands on the wall and used it to balance and guide himself up the stairs. His legs felt like jelly as he collapsed onto the bed. John Wayne Gacy had been the inspiration, or at least he’d provided the idea, for a killer clown in Clownz. Gacy, the notorious American serial killer, had slaughtered at least thirty-three people but he also had an alter ego. He donned the facade of Pogo the Clown to entertain people in his home town. Nobody suspected what was truly behind the mask. Art imitating life. And now his book had been used as the inspiration for a deranged paedophile to get access to children. Life imitating art, full circle complete. It was appalling and horrific.
He closed his eyes and felt the room turn in a nauseating circle. Tomorrow he would rip the door chime off the wall and smash it to bits. Every copy of Clownz he owned would be hidden away. Joanne said it was in the top ten but he didn’t want anyone else to read it. He’d think about getting the publisher to pull it from the shelves. At least until all this died down. It was distasteful, at the very least. All of his money had gone, all his ideas were withered and cliché and Fleur had seen to his self-respect, but none of that mattered beside the atrocities inflicted on the children by that clown. He slipped into a fevered sleep.
*
Ben had no idea what time it was, nor did he care. His entire body felt like it was on fire, literally being burned alive from the inside. He groaned and brought his hands to his face. It was covered in sweat, sticky and cold. He couldn’t stand to open his eyes but could tell it was dark. He wished he’d been clever enough to put a glass of water beside the bed earlier.
He had been dreaming about Sparkles. There had been some kind of circus in town. It had a huge red and white striped big top filled with clowns eating people’s brains, and in the background, a band of clowns was playing the terrible carnival music on instruments made of bones. The music was badly out of tune.
His head was still spinning, his thoughts random and fleeting. He knew he was in some kind of confused delirium and that sleep was the only way out of the other side. He rolled over onto his side, opening his eyes for a moment.
“Hi, Sparkles.” He tried to lift his arm to wave but he was too weak. Sparkles was standing in the doorway to his room, just standing there staring at him. The sound of Stan’s chattering teeth was like bones rattling together, so loud it hurt his ears.
“Don’t get excited, Stan, it’s just a dream. You’re not going to eat my brain are you, Sparkles?” He laughed but the clown was being miserable tonight. He looked a bit sorry for himself. He looked a mess. His make-up was all over the place and his big, red bulbous nose was missing. It was red though, red and kind of gruesome looking. And what about his costume? Sparkles never wore grubby brown overalls. Oh well, maybe he was ill too.
“Night night.” He smiled, closed his eyes and listened to the clown’s footsteps on the stairs.
*
His bladder woke him up with a level of pain that said if he didn’t haul himself out of bed in the next two minutes, not only would he be lying in sweat, he would also be lying in urine. At s
ome point, he had managed to strip down to his boxer shorts but the night had been a confused mishmash of dreams and reality.
As soon as he moved, Stan was up on his feet and round to the side of the bed. The dog pushed his nose under the duvet and nudged at Ben’s hand.
“Need to go out do you, boy?” His voice sounded like someone else’s. He reached out and stroked the dog’s wonderfully soft head. Stan moved so Ben could scratch him behind the ear. His teeth chattered and it made his lower jaw vibrate in a blur.
“Give me two minutes and I’ll get you breakfast and then you can go kill some more grass.”
Stan cocked his head and wagged his tail. He didn’t understand many words but ‘breakfast’ was one of them.
Ben swung his legs over the side of the bed and grunted. His entire body felt like he had been in a car crash, one where the car finished upside down on its roof. He took four steps and felt the room slide to the left. He took two more and grabbed the bathroom’s door frame to steady himself. It was like being in a funhouse at the fair. Too bad it wasn’t in the slightest bit funny.
After he had finished on the toilet, he filled the sink with cold water and submerged his face. The odour of stale sweat drifted off him like a noxious cloud. He knew he should shower but the thought of jets of water smashing onto his body made him feel sick. He sucked some water into his mouth and squeezed it down his throat. The pain was immediate and intense, and it made one of his legs buckle at the knee. It was a good job he was gripping the edge of the sink.
What did they say about bad throats? Something about eating toast to scratch the blisters of pus away, wasn’t it?
He pulled his dressing gown off the back of the door and walked slowly downstairs. Every few steps, the world skewed to one side then the other. This wasn’t just a sore throat, this was a full-blown case of flu.
Eating the toast was arduous, painful and slow. Each piece became tree bark in the length of time it took him to force it down. He finished it and looked out from the kitchen to the fields. The view was almost to the horizon but it was a desolate and barren vista at this time of year. In the spring months, the fields glowed with flowering rape. It was a short but vivid display.
Stan was slinking his way around the edge of the field with his nose to the ground. He paused, lifted his head to sniff the air, then put his head back down and continued his trail. The dog once belonged to Rachel. She had listened to a programme on the radio about what they did to retired racing dogs and immediately declared that she wanted not one, but two. And that was that.
Dolly had always hovered wherever Rachel was, whimpering and hopping around nervously if they weren’t together, whereas Stan mostly just slept and accepted affection from whoever offered it. When he went outside and there were rabbits close by, he would wag his tail, chatter his teeth at them and then get down to the serious business of sniffing. At twelve years old, his hunting and sprinting days were behind him but Ben suspected the chattering of teeth carried a little bit of menace, to the rabbits at least.
When Rachel left, she took Dolly but not Stan. Stan didn’t seem bothered about it. Ben suspected that Dolly’s constant state of anxiety and nervous whimpering irritated him and kept him from sleeping as much as he’d like. On the rare occasion that Stan was exercised at a park, he would avoid other dogs like the plague. He would hide behind trees, bushes and buildings, and if any dogs came near him he would put the pedal down and break into a jog. With his long legs, his jog was too fast for most other dogs. He was, by and large, antisocial which suited Ben down to the ground.
Living in the middle of nowhere had its benefits – not many unwanted callers, for one – but on rare occasions he found himself wishing he could walk to a pub with Stan and have a drink. As long as nobody bothered him, it would be fine. Even when Rachel suggested it, they took it in turns to drive so the other one could have a drink. Not that they went very often. How long had Rachel been gone now? Nearly two years. Wasn’t that the same amount of time since he’d written anything even half-decent? He knew that wasn’t a coincidence.
He looked awful. His reflection at the hotel had been bad but this, well this took the prize. He looked almost as bad as... as bad as the clown had looked, last night. The clown who stood at his bedroom door and stared at him, watching him sleep.
He shivered and turned away. That had just been a dream, a trick his fevered mind had conjured up to taunt him about Harvey Newman. That reminded him. If he did one thing today, it would be to remove the battery from the door chime. Just thinking about that tune made his skin crawl.
His office was a small room off the kitchen, and as well as housing his computer, it also contained his tool box. Not that he was any good at DIY, he wasn’t, he was utterly useless but he liked to have a tool box. It made him feel more manly.
The kettle boiled and he made himself a Lemsip. He carried it through to the office with both hands wrapped around the mug, using his aching backside to open the door. He stepped through and looked at his computer.
The mug fell from his hands and smashed on the tiled floor. He barely noticed the scalding liquid burning his toes as he stared at what was on the keyboard.
5
Stu Kelly sat in the briefing and stared at the clock. It was already an hour past his finish time, and by the time this pointless exercise was finished it would be close to two hours. He chewed his pen and sighed. Some of these wet-behind-the-ears detectives couldn’t get enough of it. They would be happy to stay all night if they were asked. Wait until they had been at this game for nearly thirty years, let’s see how enthusiastic they were then.
He looked to the front of the room. Brady was trying to motivate them all, now they knew Newman was a dirty kiddie-fiddler. In his opinion, not that it counted for much, old ‘Bingo’ got exactly what he deserved.
It had to be said, Brady had a good pair on her. He spent a lot of time considering her tits when they worked together; a lot of time thinking about what they might look like under her neatly pressed blouses.
“Are you with us, Stu?” Brady asked.
“What? Sorry.” He heard a few sniggers in the room.
“I was just saying, I’d like you to go through the CCTV footage again.”
He screwed his face up. “What? Again? I went through it yesterday.”
“Yes, Stu. As I said, we now have a better idea of the times so I want you to concentrate on a specific frame of reference.”
He sighed, very loud. He wanted her to know how he felt about it. “No problem.”
They stared at each other for a moment and the room was silent. He knew she wanted to have a go at him but she wouldn’t do that in front of everyone. He’d slip out after the briefing before she had chance.
The clock ticked on and Brady droned on. Finally, she asked for questions, which thankfully none of them had. He closed his book, which might have to be disposed of before it entered the evidential chain. The pictures of Jane Brady’s breasts might not go down well with a judge.
“Stu, can I have a word, please?”
His heart sank. This would be another ten minutes of his life he wouldn’t get back. The room emptied and he walked to Brady.
She looked pissed off. “Stu, at least try to pretend you’re interested. You can’t behave like that.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just tired.” He wasn’t particularly, he just wanted to get home and have a drink.
“We all are. Just try. Okay?”
He nodded and smiled. “Okay if I go now?”
Brady nodded. “See you at seven.”
He turned and walked away. As soon as he pushed through the doors he mouthed the word ‘bitch’.
*
Kelly thought about Brady as he drove home. He hated her. She had a big mouth and she thought she knew better than everyone else. He knew what she was up to. She was giving him all the crappy jobs that nobody else wanted. First she had him driving to the middle of nowhere to talk to some writer. He clearly hadn’t go
t a clue what was happening, in fact he looked half-dead. Then she had him on a CCTV trawl and that made him late home yesterday. Late for the match, late for his kebab and late for his beer. Now he was late home tonight as well. DS Brady, what a joke.
Bitch. She was the reason he’d been sidelined for promotion too. That incident with the prostitute had nearly got him the sack. She had dropped him right in it. From a great height. They dangled his balls over the fire for a whole year over that one. They were all bitches. Know-it-all bitches who thought they were better than him.
Kelly pulled onto his driveway and switched off the engine. On his last day, he was going to tell her exactly what he thought of her. He was going to tell a lot of people what he thought about them. That day couldn’t come soon enough, but he had to keep his nose clean for the next couple of years so he could get his hands on that juicy pension. Mary would have to get her share, of course. She was a bitch too. An ex-wife bitch.
He leaned over and picked up the bags from the passenger seat. One had his dinner in. Chicken bhuna, pillau rice, peshwari naan and a bag of chips on the side. It would probably give him a nasty case of indigestion all night and bad guts in the morning but it was worth it. The other bag had eight cans of lager in. It was buy one get one half-price, so it seemed a shame not to take them up on the offer.
He hauled himself out of the car with a grunt. If he could make it through the next two years and avoid doing the fitness test, he would be a very happy man. He got inside and closed the door. One thing he should be grateful for was that he wasn’t involved in the child abuse case. That looked like it might be a long and difficult job and had the potential to get messy. No, if Kelly was lucky, the bosses would send him back to divisional CID where he knew how to avoid work. He’d perfected it over the last ten years.
He walked into the kitchen and put his bags on the worktop. It felt chilly tonight, he might have to put the heating on. He pulled a can out of the bag, opened it and took a long drink. That was better. Almost immediately he could feel the alcohol taking the edge off his day.
