Circus of Nightmares: Death is the Ultimate Illusion (The Anglesey Mysteries Book 2)

by Conrad Jones

  On the face of it, it wasn’t the type of crime Matrix officers would investigate but due to the possible identity of one of the victims, the chief had insisted she take the lead until the facts were established. Whoever dumped the bodies in the pond, didn’t intend for them to be recovered anytime soon. A hundred years from now maybe, when global warming had sucked all the moisture from the soil. No one expects a pond to be drained. The construction project was a stroke of luck for the police. It was about time she had some luck with the case, which she had all but forgotten about. The case had been unsolvable, so she pushed it to the back of her mind. There were too many serious crimes waiting to be solved to dwell on a dead duck.

  She was accompanied by her detective inspector, Gill Robinson. They were both from the Huyton area of the city and had been partnered for over seven years; they had moved through the ranks together. Both detectives were cautiously optimistic that the bodies found during the reclamation of pond land, might be related to a historic misper case which they had worked on five years ago. Technically, it was still open but in reality, it was inactive. A young couple in their early twenties had vanished following a visit to a travelling circus. They hadn’t been seen or heard of since and every avenue of enquiry had led to a dead end. Leo Jobson and Katrina Watkins simply disappeared from the face of the Earth.

  Matrix was involved because Leo Jobson was the eldest son of a key figure in the organised crime world. His father, Len Jobson was a dangerous enforcer for the Quinn family. The Quinns were heavily involved in the distribution of class-A drugs across the UK and people trafficking across Europe. They had become experts at moving people and product together, in tandem with removing the competition in brutal fashion.

  Initially, it was hoped the couple had taken off and gone on a bender but as the days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months with no phone or bank activity, it became clear something sinister had happened to them. Matrix was given the lead because of the organised crime connection but without any evidence, bodies or ransom demands, it was effectively a missing persons case. Len Jobson was adamant Leo had been kidnapped by rivals because of his link to the Quinn family. Initially, the search for them had been feverish. Dozens of local people from all over the North West travelled to the area to search for them. Following a television appeal, a tipoff indicated the couple had been seen in the back of a minibus in Betws-y-Coed, North Wales. The witness said she’d seen a young couple matching the description and that the female was crying. It was a spurious lead but the search was extended to the rivers, mountains and forests of Snowdonia and the surrounding areas but no trace was found. Despite all the searches and media attention, nothing came to fruition. Slowly but surely, resources were moved onto other cases and the investigation ground to a halt. Eventually, it was parked. The terrible truth was Katrina Watkins and Leo Jobson, a popular couple with large families had vanished without a trace. The discovery of the two bodies at the construction site was the first break they had had for five years. Anne couldn’t help but feel nervous excitement mixed with a lingering sense of dread. Finding them would solve a mystery that had plagued her for years but it would also pick the scabs from old wounds. Some things were best left undiscovered.

  Gill parked the Shogun as close to the cordon as she could. There was a refrigerated van from the mortuary and a CSI vehicle already on the scene. A small crowd of reporters and a larger crowd of onlookers were being corralled by uniformed officers. The journalists and police officers looked thoroughly dissatisfied by the situation, neither side was giving an inch. She lowered the window. There was a lot of shouting and balling coming from the crowd. She noticed some of them were crying. That wasn’t good. They were not there out of random curiosity.

  ‘The ghouls are here already,’ Anne said, checking her appearance in the mirror. She was fifty and in good shape. Her hair was streaked blond and tied tight to her head. She pulled on a baseball cap and threaded her hair through the back. A pair of dark sunglasses completed the guise. She wasn’t the most popular superintendent on Merseyside by a long way. Failure to find the couple had been laid squarely at her feet by the families. Gill was a more petite version of Anne. They could have been sisters.

  ‘Unfortunately, they’re not ghouls,’ Gill said. Anne looked confused. ‘I think they’re family.’

  ‘What?’ Anne sighed and scanned the crowd for familiar faces. There were several. ‘How the hell did they find out so quicky?’

  ‘Facebook,’ Gill said, struggling into her padded coat. She opened the door and climbed out. The wind blew in from the Mersey and she immediately wished she had put tights on under her jeans. ‘One of the construction workers posted pictures of the bodies online before we were even alerted. People thought it was a hoax at first. They’ve been removed but it was too late to stop them being shared a few hundred times.’

  ‘A few hundred times?’

  ‘It doesn’t take long. Rumours are rife on social media. Because they were found here in Speke, people in the area are guessing who the bodies belong to.’

  ‘It doesn’t take a genius to work it out.’

  ‘There was a post saying some of the families were on their way.’ Gill gestured to the crowd. ‘Looking at them, I’d be surprised if they’re not there already,’ she added, pointing to the angry gathering.

  ‘Jesus,’ Anne said, getting out. ‘There are two bodies but we don’t know who they are yet. They’re making huge assumptions. What is wrong with people?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘And why would you post photographs of dead people on the internet, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Likes and shares,’ Gill said. ‘The more you get, the more popular you feel. It’s all about creating a response. The poster is famous for a while. A couple of dead bodies in an oil drum is like gold dust online, even if it is short lived.’

  ‘I despair,’ Anne said. ‘We can’t keep anything secret for more than a few minutes.’ Some of the crowd noticed them arriving. A number of them broke away and jogged across the car park towards them. She recognised one of the women as Alice Watkins. Katrina’s mother. She’d been extremely vocal about how crap their investigation had been. ‘Oh, for god’s sake!’ Anne muttered. ‘We’ve been spotted.’

  ‘Are you in charge again?’ Alice Watkins shouted. ‘It will be another bloody shambles if you are.’ She was holding a blown-up image of a young woman. It wasn’t the best image of Katrina but it made a statement. ‘Do you remember this face?’ she shouted. ‘This is my daughter. How have you still got a job?’ Anne ignored her and walked on; her head bowed. ‘You should be directing traffic but you’d probably fuck that up too.’

  ‘Bloody charming,’ Anne said, under her breath.

  ‘Don’t make things worse,’ Gill said.

  ‘Have you found my Katrina?’ Alice asked.

  ‘We don’t know anything yet,’ Gill said, trying to calm things. ‘As soon as we know, you’ll know.’

  ‘Is Leo there?’ an elderly man shouted. He looked angry. It was Len Jobson. He looked a hundred years older than the last time she’d seen him. His Armani leather jacket was hanging on him. The broad shoulders he once had were gone. Anne thought he looked seriously ill. ‘Come on, Anne. You’re a reasonable woman. If you’ve found our kids, we have a right to know.’

  ‘We don’t know who it is yet, Len.’ Anne half turned to face him.

  ‘You have got a good idea who it is or you wouldn’t be here,’ Len said, stony faced. His eyes were dull like a shark. Anne didn’t want to disrespect him. Len was a coldblooded killer responsible for some of the most terrible crimes she’d ever witnessed. ‘We’re not idiots.’

  ‘We have just arrived, Len,’ Anne said, walking away. ‘I’ll know more once we’ve seen the bodies.’

  ‘We’ve always been straight with each other, Anne,’ Len said. ‘You’re Matrix detectives and this is not your remit unless it’s linked to organised crime.’ Anne sighed. There was little point in lying. ‘Is it possible my son i
s one of the dead bodies?’

  ‘We don’t know anything yet,’ Gill said, ushering the DS to the safety of the cordon. ‘Don’t give that man anything until we’re ready,’ Gill whispered in her ear. Uniformed officers arrived and moved the grieving families back without too much turmoil. ‘As soon as we know anything, we’ll let the relevant families know,’ Gill said to the crowd.

  ‘You know who they are,’ Alice shouted. ‘If that’s my daughter, I want to see her. We’ve got rights!’

  ‘We will keep you posted,’ Gill said.

  ‘It’s all over Facebook that my Katrina is in there,’ Alice shouted. ‘How can Facebook know where my daughter is before you do?’ She tried to follow the detectives under the crime scene tape but the constables held her back. ‘You’re a disgrace!’ she shouted. ‘You couldn’t find your nose on your face, useless bitch.’ The press photographers made the most of the opportunity to capture the superintendent being barracked. Cameras and microphones were pointed at Alice Watkins and Len Jobson. The grieving parents. Questions were fired in their direction. It was journalistic opium.

  ‘This is going to be a nightmare,’ Anne said. They picked their way to the pond listening to the torrent of abuse. CSI had erected a tent over the drum and the remains. Officers in forensic suits were picking through the skips on site and another team were painstakingly sifting through the mud on the pond bed. It was a mammoth task. ‘Let’s see what we have, shall we?’

  The detectives suited up and put facemasks on, then went into the tent. Pamela Stone and her photographer were examining the remains. The air was thick with decay.

  ‘Hello Anne,’ Pamela said. ‘Gill. Nice to see you.’

  ‘Hello Pamela. What can you tell us?’ Ann asked. ‘We need some answers. There are angry parents on the car park.’

  ‘I’ve heard them,’ Pamela said. ‘It’s impossible not to hear them.’ She paused. ‘Okay, let’s get down to business. We have a male and a female. The male is fully clothed. He’s white, twenties to thirties, short blond hair, full set of teeth in good condition. He has a tan line on his left wrist, which indicates he was wearing a watch before he died but no watch has been found. From the shape of his lower arm, he has a broken right radius and ulna. The breaks are clean as if he was hit hard across the wrist with something solid. And there’s a depressed fracture to the back of the skull. Possibly caused by a lump hammer. A heavy one with a square face.’

  ‘It’s the shape of a brick,’ Gill said.

  ‘It is but we would generally find brick particles in the wound. This is clean which makes me say the instrument was metal, probably a large hammer.’

  ‘Okay,’ Gill said. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘His wrists and ankles are fastened with heavy duty zip ties. His cause of death is uncertain yet but it’s probably the blow to the head.’

  ‘Is the lump hammer the type used by a tradesman?’ Anne asked. ‘A joiner or bricklayer maybe?’

  ‘No. It’s too big and heavy. It would be used to demolish or hammer something big into the ground. Fencing maybe?’

  ‘Maybe the type for knocking stakes into the ground?’ Gill asked. ‘Like a marquee.’

  ‘I think I know what you mean,’ Pamela said, looking up at her. She smiled sympathetically. ‘It’s possible but obviously, I can’t say for sure. He has no ID on him but there’s a tattoo on his forearm and another on his right calf.’

  ‘It has to be Leo Jobson,’ Anne said, excitedly. ‘A compass on his arm and a Liverpool Football Club crest on his leg?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure that fits with your misper case?’ Pamela asked. Anne nodded and sighed.

  ‘The tattoos match,’ Gill said, nodding her head. ‘Part of me didn’t want it to be them,’ Gill said. ‘I was hoping they were running a bar on a beach in Goa.’

  ‘Sadly not. It must be a relief to find them after all this time,’ Pamela said. The detectives nodded imperceptibly. It was a bittersweet moment. ‘If that is Leo Jobson, then we want this to be Katrina Watkins,’ she said pointing to the female body. ‘The female has long blond hair. Her ears are pierced, once in the left ear, twice in the right. She has a nose ring in her left nostril, which is still there. And most importantly, she has a butterfly tattooed on her right thigh.’ Anne nodded and looked at Gill. Gill agreed. It matched Katrina. ‘She is naked and her wrists are fastened with the same zip ties. There are grooves in the radius and ulna bones, so she struggled. She has a couple of teeth missing at the front, which don’t marry up with the pictures of your mispers but they may have been lost at the time of death. I can’t be certain but the cause of death looks like strangulation. The bodies have been preserved to a certain extent because the drum was sealed and the temperature at the bottom of the pond was cool and stable. I need to get them back to the lab before they start to deteriorate. The air will get to them quickly and I want to preserve what we have. Dental records should confirm it’s them but I think the tattoos are enough to confirm their identities. We all know who they are.’

  ‘Yes. We’ll have to prepare something to give to the families and press,’ Anne agreed. She looked at Gill and she agreed.

  ‘Anything on the drum yet?’ Gill asked.

  ‘Not yet. I haven’t had chance to look at it in detail yet.’ Pamela gestured to the drum. ‘From the markings, it didn’t contain oil or a chemical. I think it’s some kind of axle grease. The type used on plant machines and heavy equipment. JCB’s, tractors, forklift trucks, the underneath of HGV’s and the like. Anything with moving parts that are exposed to the air.’

  ‘Like trailers?’ Gill asked. ‘And fairground machinery?’

  ‘Just like trailers and fairground machinery,’ Pamela said. ‘I believe the circus was the last place they were seen?’

  ‘Yes,’ Gill said. ‘Would fairground rides use grease like this?’

  ‘Yes. They operate outside in all weather and they’re transported large distances by road, so everything would need to be greased to protect the moving parts from the elements while they’re in transit,’ Pamela said.

  ‘Leo paid for two tickets for the Circus of Nightmares on his debit card. His phone was located by a mast close to where the fairground operated and that was the last time his bank account was used. We need to go back to the beginning on this one and speak to anyone we can find who was around at the time they went missing. Hopefully, the fairground employees.’

  ‘What was said when they were questioned at the time?’ Pamela asked.

  ‘There was a time lag, which was critical to the case,’ Anne said. ‘It was four days until their disappearance was taken as out of the ordinary. One side of the family thought they were with the other or they’d jumped on a plane and gone on holiday without telling anyone. Leo had money. We think he was a low-level member of the Quinns although we could never prove it. It was Katrina’s absence on social media which caused concern. They didn’t respond to text messages or phone calls from friends and family. The family reported it to us six days after they were last seen by which time, the circus was in France and the fairground employees had dispersed, some with the circus and some with another fair in Ireland and some down south with a fair at a music festival. With hindsight, we didn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of tracing them via the fairground employees.’

  ‘Their workforce is transient,’ Gill said. ‘They work for a few nights then they are gone for months working on another event in a different part of the country. We’ve questioned employees who were working on the fairground around that time. Some of them several times and we hit a blank each time. Not a single person we spoke to remembers working that night or seeing the couple.’

  ‘They must see thousands of people over a weekend,’ Pamela said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Gill agreed. ‘Now, we know what happened to them but five years have gone by and they’ve been all over Europe and back several times since then. The chances of finding the original employees are zero but we have to be seen to be doing something.’ Gill s
hrugged. ‘I think it’s a massive waste of our time and resources but it’s time to revisit them. I follow the circus online and get an update of their whereabouts on my phone,’ Gill added. ‘The circus has been back in the country for over two weeks. It’s just landed on Anglesey.’

  ‘We’ve got to go to the island for our next job.’ Pamela smiled. ‘I’ve always wanted to see that circus. I hear it’s quite special. I might buy a ticket.’

  ‘It arrived yesterday, apparently,’ Anne said. ‘We might see you there. That’s where we’re heading now.’ She took out her mobile. ‘I need to talk to the chief and see how much of what we know he wants to release to the press and the families. We can tell them the bodies are probably Katrina and Leo but we need to keep the details under wraps for now.’

  *******************************************

  Kelly and Jack got into his car and sat in silence for a minute. She could smell cigarettes on him and the smell was disgusting. He must have smoked ten while they were giving the police their statements. One after another. His smoking hadn’t bothered her as much before but today it did. It bothered her a lot. He took out his cigarettes and put one in his mouth.

  ‘Don’t light that,’ Kelly said. ‘They stink.’

  ‘My nerves are shot,’ Jack said. ‘I smoke more when my nerves are bad. First the news about my mum and then a woman dies in front of us. What a day. No wonder I feel like smoking.’

  ‘Wait until you get home,’ Kelly said. She looked around nervously. ‘You can drop me off by the Kings on Land’s End. I’ll cut through the lanes from there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jack asked, surprised she wanted to go home without him.

  ‘It’s simple. Take me back to town and drop me off by the Kings,’ Kelly said. He reached for her hand but she pulled it away. ‘Leave me alone. Don’t touch me please. I’m feeling very on edge, nervous and frightened and I don’t need to be touched right now, thank you. Just take me to town.’