by Conrad Jones
‘Pack that in,’ Chelle said. ‘All that will attract is flies.’
‘My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,’ Tiff sang and twerked. Her head began to spin and a wave of nausea hit her. ‘I need to sit down for a minute, Chelle,’ she hiccupped and sat on the low wall near the old library. ‘Of all the places to be pissed, right in front of the copshop.’ She looked up at the police station windows. ‘Is anyone looking?’
‘They’re too busy to give a flying flute what you’re doing. If you’re going to be sick, don’t do it on your shoes,’ Chelle said, lighting a cigarette. ‘You’ll stink of sick all day. Be sick down the grid if you need to.’
‘Don’t be pissed off with me,’ Tiff said. ‘I’ll be alright in a minute.’
‘I told you not to take a drink off those blokes from the fair,’ Chelle said. ‘They were well dodgy. Only after one thing and one thing only.’
‘I only had one drink from them.’
‘You had three.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes, and you know you did.’
‘Don’t peck my head. I just need a rest for a minute,’ Tiff said. ‘I can’t do it like we used to, Chelle. I’m getting old.’
‘You’re nineteen for fuck’s sake,’ Chelle said, laughing. ‘Not ninety.’
A van slowed down and stopped at the kerb. It belonged to the circus. The artwork on the panels was incredible. Full size clowns wielded chainsaws and flamethrowers and the name was emblazoned down the centre. Three men were sitting in the cab. The passenger wound down the window. It was the men from the pub.
‘Hello ladies. We meet again. Do you need a lift to the fair?’ he asked, eyeing them.
‘We might not be going to the fair,’ Chelle said. Tiff hiccupped again.
‘Your friend said you were going to the circus. We’ll give you a lift if you like?’ he asked. His accent was foreign. Chelle couldn’t place it. ‘We work there. Your friend was talking to us in the pub. She looks like she needs a lift.’
‘I’m fine thank you very much, cheeky arse,’ Tiff said. Her head wobbled as she spoke. ‘And she’s not my friend, she’s my sister.’
‘Sisters?’ the man said. ‘Even better.’ He nudged his friend. ‘We’re brothers and we like sisters, don’t we?’ His friend laughed and sneered at the women. ‘Get in. We’ll look after you.’
‘We don’t need looking after,’ Chelle said. ‘My mum told me never to get in a vehicle with a strange man and you three, look more than strange,’ she said. ‘So, if you don’t mind, piss off and leave us alone.’ Chelle raised her middle finger. ‘On your way, sunshine.’
‘No need to be nasty,’ the man said, smiling. ‘We bought your sister some shots for her birthday.’
‘I know you did. That’s why she’s sitting on the wall wondering what her name is.’
‘I know what my name is,’ Tiff complained.
‘We’re just being friendly.’
‘We don’t need any friends,’ Chelle said. She saw the Thomas brothers approaching. They were walking past the cinema coming from The Albert. The three brothers were about the same age as their dad. ‘My boyfriend is here,’ she said waving to the Thomas men. They waved back, laughing and joking, oblivious to their situation.
‘You like older men?’ the man asked, frowning.
‘Don’t you get the message?’ Chelle said. ‘Just piss off. We’re not interested.’
‘Everything alright, Chelle?’ the eldest brother called.
The circus men looked around, closed the window and drove away. The passenger pointed at Chelle and pulled out his tongue. She flicked him the finger again.
‘Who was that, Chelle?’ one of the brothers asked. ‘Were they bothering you?’
‘Just a couple of chancers looking for an easy leg over,’ she said. ‘Tiff did shots with them. She’s pissed. She looks like she’s fair game to them.’
‘Oh, bugger off,’ Tiff said. ‘So, what if I did a few shots. It doesn’t mean I want anything else from them. Dickheads. I’m not that easy.’
‘You two have always been easy,’ the other brother said, laughing.
‘I’ll bash you around the head in a minute,’ Chelle said. ‘Then I’ll tell my dad what you said.’
‘He won’t believe a word you say.’
‘Funny. We’ll walk up the road with you.’
‘As long as you walk a few yards behind us. We don’t want anyone thinking we’re together.’
‘Cheeky bugger,’ Chelle giggled.
The group walked together, laughing and joking. They’d known each other most of their lives. The three men in the circus van sat watching from a distance. They didn’t speak. There was no need to. It was easy to spot the vulnerable ones and there would be plenty over the next few days. There always was. Spotting the vulnerable ones had become an artform. The girl who had taken the shots with them wouldn’t know what her name was in an hour. Her shots had a little something extra in them. Easy as taking candy from a baby.
Chapter 3
Jane Orange was sitting next to her husband’s bed. He was attached to a heart monitor and had drips going into both hands. A nasogastric tube had been inserted. The doctors had stabilised him but his stats weren’t responding as they should be. Malcolm had spoken only once and it was very briefly. The doctors were preparing to take him for an MRI scan. Jane was beside herself. They had been married for thirty-years and she adored him. They were soulmates. She was reminiscing in her mind. Malcolm was stubborn beyond belief. She was trying to rationalise what had happened to him but there was no sense to be made of it. She wished she had insisted he didn’t go to the fairground but hindsight is a great gift. There was a knock on the door and two uniformed officers walked in.
‘Mrs Orange?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sergeant Bob Dewhurst and this is sergeant April Byfelt,’ Bob said. ‘We believe your husband was assaulted?’
‘Yes,’ Jan said. ‘He woke up for a few minutes and told me what happened to him.’ She wiped a tear away. ‘He went to the circus to talk to them about having a licence. He’s getting old and can be a bit pedantic. They hit him. The bullies hit him because he couldn’t hit them back. They punched him in the head and knocked him out. He has a lump the size of an egg on the back of his head.’ She began to cry harder. ‘I warned him not to go there alone. I would have gone with him but I had just got out of the shower and I was drying my hair and by the time I was dressed, he was already gone. The bloody fool. I told him not to go there alone.’ She took a tissue from her bag and blew her nose. ‘I followed him onto the Newry to find him and when I reached the road, I noticed someone waving at me from the public toilet block on the corner. It was Minnie Ellis from number thirty. A neighbour. They found Malcolm collapsed on the pavement and called an ambulance.’
‘Okay,’ April said, calming her. ‘Take your time and go back to the beginning. Where did Malcolm go when he left home?’ The door opened and a nurse and porter came in.
‘We need to take your husband for a scan,’ the nurse said. They detached the sensors and pushed the bed towards the door, leaving an empty space. ‘We shouldn’t be too long.’
‘Should I be with him?’ Jane asked, worried.
‘There’s no need. You can’t go in anyway,’ the nurse said, without stopping. ‘He’ll be back before you know it.’ The door closed and an awkward silence fell.
‘Don’t worry, he’s in good hands,’ April said. ‘You were telling us where Malcolm went to this morning.’
‘To that bloody awful circus,’ Jane said.
‘On the Newry?’ Bob asked.
‘Yes. They turned up late last night and were set up by this morning. Malcolm is a councillor and he had a bee in his bonnet about them setting up without a permit. The big top is right in front of our living room window. It’s blocking our view, which is what really wound him up. That was one thing but the main thing is he knows they don’t have a licence. Malcolm overreacted. He�
��s particular about things. Do you know what I mean?’ She paused. ‘Actually, he’s way beyond particular. He’s anal to be honest but he has a point.’ She shrugged and blew her nose again. ‘They just turned up last night and set up as if they owned the place. “Do-as-they-likeys,” Malcolm calls them instead of pikeys. Because they do as they like all the time. I’ve told him not to call them names like that but his generation are stuck in their ways.’
‘Yes. We get it,’ April said, nodding. She glanced at Bob, who had a habit of being inappropriate. Bob smirked. ‘So, he went to the circus to do what?’
‘To tell them they didn’t have a licence, of course,’ Jane said. ‘He went to tell them they needed to pack up and move on or he would call the police.’
‘Oh, dear me. What on Earth was he thinking?’ Bob asked.
‘That’s what I tried to tell him but he went anyway.’
‘Did he go alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did he think they would pack up because he asked them to?’ Bob asked, shaking his head.
‘I told him they wouldn’t and I told him he was likely to get a punch on the nose for his troubles but he didn’t listen,’ Jane said, sighing. ‘His heart is bad. He shouldn’t have any stress at all. I warned him. I wish I’d done more to stop him but he can be so bloody minded.’
‘What did he say happened?’
‘He said he got there and talked to the lady who runs it. Lottie, I think he said her name is,’ Jane said. ‘Anyway, she sent him packing and the fairground people bundled him towards the road when he started getting chest pains. He was asking for an ambulance but they ignored him and then a clown spoke to him. Someone punched him in the back of the head.’
‘A clown?’
‘Yes. That’s what he said. A clown,’ Jane said, nodding. ‘A noticeably big clown, apparently. Then he woke up here.’
‘Did he say anything else?’ April asked.
‘No. He drifted off. He was found outside the public toilets, so maybe he made his way there before he collapsed?’
‘We’ll have to speak to the fairground employees,’ April said.
The door opened and a matron stepped in. She looked concerned. ‘Mrs Orange. I’m afraid the doctors have found a bleed on the brain. They’ve taken your husband straight into theatre. Its vital they operate now.’
‘Oh my god,’ Jane muttered. Her hands were shaking. ‘They did this. Those bloody awful pikeys. You need to arrest them.’
‘We’ll speak to them,’ April said. ‘Is there anyone we can call to sit with you?’
‘My sister is on her way,’ Jane said.
‘We’ll be in touch as soon as we have something to tell you,’ Bob said. Jane nodded. They left the room and walked down the corridor. ‘It doesn’t sound good.’ Bob shook his head. ‘A bleed on the brain is never good.’
‘Let’s go and find a big clown,’ April said.
‘That shouldn’t be difficult at a circus?’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ Bob muttered. ‘How hard can it be?’
Chapter 4
Roy Jacobs watched as the last of the water drained away. The pumps began chugging mud and sludge, exposing everything that had sunk to the bottom of the pond over the many years it had been there. There was no way of knowing how long it had existed. It was marked on ordnance survey maps from their conception and was fed by several draining ditches from neighbouring farmland. The pond had taken three days to empty and filled sixteen tankers and thirteen skips. It had been used as a dumping ground for decades. Shopping trolleys, furniture, fridges, bicycles and an old Ford Escort had been removed during the operation to relocate it. It was set to be filled in and a car park for a German supermarket built on it. The ground workers on the project were being monitored by two environmental experts, making sure the damage to the ecosystem was minimal and the old pond was replaced by a new one, the same size. As part of the planning process, the developers had paid for a similar pond to be built a few hundred metres away although the monitors insisted none of the junk and refuse found in the pond should be transferred into the new one, which didn’t seem fair. They had to dispose of the debris at their own cost. Only the newts and frogs would be relocated. The insects would find their own way, apparently, which sounded like bollocks to Roy but the world of construction was a different place nowadays. Environmental impact was a dirty word to the planners, even if it was the impact on a species of frog and his neighbours. Roy thought it was inconsequential to those in business but the world had changed. Conservation was king.
Draining the water down to the muddy bed had exposed an oil drum, which was within reach of the bank. It was rusted and dented at one end. The faded brand etched onto the metal was unreadable and covered in green pondweed. Roy gestured to the drum.
‘Put a chain around it and we’ll pull it out,’ he said.
Two of his workers dressed in rubber waders, trudged across the pond bed through the mud. It was painstakingly slow work. When they reached it, they struggled to move the drum at all. It was buried deep in the clinging sludge. They wrestled with it and managed to lift one end and fastened a chain around it. It wasn’t as tight as it could have been but it was the best they could do under the circumstances. Roy gave the signal and a JCB digger pulled it slowly from the mud. There was a loud sucking sound as it came free. The driver let the drum settle and shifted the balance slightly, then swung it towards the bank, where several labourers and Roy were waiting to check if it contained anything dangerous which couldn’t be disposed of easily. If it was a corrosive chemical, the inspectors would have a meltdown and take a week to decide which way the drum should be carried, by who and where it should go. If it was empty, they could simply throw it in the scrap metal skip. Roy wanted it to be empty. The inspectors were beginning to drive him nuts. The drum was unstable and it swung back and to like a pendulum.
‘That’s heavier than it should be.’ Roy shook his head.
‘What does that mean,’ one of the inspectors asked, taking a picture on his phone.
‘It’s not empty, Einstein,’ Roy mumbled under his breath. ‘Lower it here,’ Roy shouted over the noise of the diesel engine. He’d been the foreman since the start of the job. The project manager was a ghost called Andrew Machin, who had been to the site twice since they broke ground eighteen months earlier and clearly didn’t give a toss about it. Roy took it all in his stride. The machine whirred and stopped suddenly when the mechanical arm hit a tree branch above them. Roy had told Machin the trees should be removed before the pond was drained but Machin disagreed. There was a loud crack as the limb splintered from the trunk and the workers ran for cover as the huge branch fell to earth, barely missing them.
‘Careful!’ Roy shouted at the machine operator. The drum swung wildly from the chain. It became unbalanced and slipped free, hitting the ground with a clatter. The drum split and the lid burst open. Thick stinking sludge sprayed skyward and splattered Roy and the workers. One of them wiped the rotting goo from his face and vomited. The stink of decay engulfed them. ‘What the hell is that?’
Roy felt the sludge on his cheek and nose and waited for it to burn his skin but no pain came. He wiped it off, relieved it wasn’t acidic but recoiled at the stench. It wasn’t any chemical he had encountered before.
‘It reeks like a rotting fish,’ another said, backing away. The contents of the drum were partially exposed. ‘Look at that,’ he said pointing inside the drum. Roy could make out the shape of a human. ‘That’s a woman.’
‘Is she dead?’ one of the workers called Greg asked.
‘Of course, she’s dead. You idiot,’ Roy said, shaking his head.
The head and shoulders of a decomposed female were visible, protruding from the drum. Her skin was leathery and creased. The blond hair was long and matted. Her lips had receded exposing the teeth and gums, and her eyes were long gone, leaving deep black sockets. The remainder of the corpse remained stuffed inside. Roy took a closer look. It wasn’
t a manikin or dummy of some kind. It was human. He took out his phone and turned on the torch. He could make out the twisted limbs of another person.
‘There’s another body in there,’ he said. One of the environmental inspectors was sick. The stench of decomposition was overpowering. ‘So much for worrying about newts and frogs, eh matey.’ Roy laughed. ‘They’re the least of our problems now. We’ve got a couple of murder victims to deal with.’
‘How do you know they were murdered?’ Greg asked.
‘Someone explain to Greg how we know they were murdered please. Use a diagram if necessary. I haven’t got the time,’ Roy said. He took out his work phone and called the office. ‘This is Roy at the Liverpool site. We’ve got a major problem at the pond,’ he said. ‘We’ve recovered a chemical drum from the pond bed and there are two bodies in it.’ Roy listened to the startled response and a barrage of questions, which he answered as best he could. ‘Give Machin a call and tell him he needs to get here sharpish. This will cheer the miserable bastard up and we need the police here too. Okay thanks.’ He ended the call and looked at the decomposed bodies. Greg looked confused. It was clear no one had explained the situation to him. Roy patted him on the back. ‘Listen to me, Greg. She didn’t climb in there by herself and put the lid on and neither did her companion. Someone put them in that drum, sealed it and dumped it in the pond.’
‘That’s not good,’ Greg said, shaking his head.
‘No. It isn’t,’ Roy agreed. ‘The police will be all over this like a rash. They’ll want everything we’ve pulled out of there and they’ll want to examine the pond bed. This is going to put us back weeks,’ Roy added, lighting a cigarette. ‘There will be a massive delay.’