Send in the Clowns, a Detective Mike Bridger novel

by Mark Bredenbeck

  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 t
he 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.

  Bridger had asked for the half hour before Maria had left the hospital to be included in the footage and put the feed on fast play to quickly scroll through, but not fast enough so they would miss anyone moving through the screen. He had to stop and go back a couple of times to eliminate each unsuspecting person appearing on the recording. No one had entered the alleyway yet.

  The clock on the screen now read 10:34pm; four minutes after the original Hospital camera feed they had seized captured Maria Staverly exiting the front doors. The small and ghostly image of Maria appeared on the screen leaving the hospital grounds via the vehicle entrance; she appeared relaxed and even skipped a couple of times as if dancing with herself as she walked out onto the road and out of view. A couple of seconds later she appeared on the next feed down stepping onto the pathway on the other side and walking into the alleyway beside the Hercus building. Everyone held their breath.

  A split second later, another figure followed her into the alleyway; Bridger stopped the feed before the figure went out of view and stared at the dark shape, stilled on the screen.

  “Those clothes… can anyone make out what they are?”

  Becky got off her chair and leaned over the keyboard in front of Bridger. Hitting a couple of keys, she made the image larger, before stepping back and looking.

  She did not need to say anything, the image before them clearly showed who they were looking at. The velvet waistcoat and chiffon shirt were glaring back at them. Michael Wilson, in what would be his last moments on earth, had followed their suspect into the alleyway where he had met with the wrong end of a piece of rough sawn wood.

  Bridger quickly scrolled through the next ten minutes of footage; he could not see anyone else entering the alleyway via the Hercus Building. The footage from the Robbie Burns hotel on the other side was next to useless, but from the minimal view they had it was unlikely anyone had come from there, unlikely, but not impossible. Either way, it looked like to Bridger that they had the right person sitting in the cells below them. They just had to prove it.

  Glancing at the clock on the office wall, he realised that it was not going to happen this late in the day. He had to attend the meeting with the IPCA representative in an hour and it would be better not to keep Mr uppity Joyce waiting. Feeling a little dryness in his mouth, he wondered if he actually was a little more worried about the outcome of that meeting than he realised. He had come such a long way since then, did he deserve to have that taken from him?

  Laura, Maria, murder, and an angry assault, all tumbled around inside his head, and all were fighting for equal attention. A drink would not go astray at this point, but the thought instantly bought Laura’s name to the front of the line. He did not want to go there; a coffee would have to do.

  Taking a breath to steady himself he looked at the expectant faces in front of him, no one was speaking, just watching him with hidden thoughts that he could not interpret. He wondered how long he had been inside his own head.

  There was nothing else to do, they would have to sleep on it and put it to Maria first thing in the morning. Everyone would be fresh, and a night in the cells might make Maria realise the situation she was in. “Alright team, time to knock it on the head, be back here at seven tomorrow morning. We will interview Maria then.”

  No one needed telling twice, the office emptied quickly, leaving Bridger sitting at his desk staring at the picture of Irish Mick in his costume, smiling, as if he owned the world.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Clowns were laughing and playing silly, just as they always did. They were making her giggle uncontro
llably, her stomach felt tight with the effort. Looking up from the floor, she saw his great big red smile beaming down at her, his spotty arms with big purple hands were reaching down and tickling her around the waist. The others were singing silly songs, and she was laughing, so hard she wet herself.

  It was not much, just a little bit had leaked out, but she knew. She could feel the wetness spreading, she could smell it… and so could he. Feeling ashamed but still looking up at him, she hoped it would be different. He had stopped tickling her, his spotty arms went to his hips. She could see the permanent smile was still there, but his eyes showed something else, something close to disgust. The laughing had stopped, the others were gone, and there were no more silly songs. “Don’t hate me… I didn’t mean it…” The purple hand raised in a blur of spots…

  “Maria? Are you awake…? Maria.”

  The look in his eyes was the last to go as the light switched on, invading the darkness in her head. Maria opened her own eyes and blinked as her pupils contracted and got used to the glare. Had she been sleeping? It had seemed so real. Why did she dream in such a way? It had been happening more and more recently, polluting her happy memories with dirt. The Clowns were her family; they were her carers in childhood and they were her friends now. It was only the one she feared.

  “Maria, do you want anything to eat?”

  She looked up blankly, looking for the person behind the voice. Who was this asking her about food? She could see only eyes, in a small slot, in a solid door. They showed indifference, not caring what her answer would be. They were the eyes of a captor, and she was captive. The cell she lay in crushed her senses as the reality of her situation came back to her in a rush. Jo’s eyes flashed before her now, the look that had passed between them when she had placed her hand on her shoulder and said those words. It was a look of betrayal.