by Vanda Symon
‘Oh, I get it. Because the circus is in town and we’re a pack of bloody ratbags, thieves and criminals, it must be one of us killing people off. Is that how it goes? We get the blame for effing everything because we’re a pack of murdering gypsy bastards?’
Déjà vu. I seem to have heard this argument very recently, verbatim. It was probably one he practised in front of the mirror for just the right occasion – like pulling out the race or religion card to make people back off. Didn’t think it would work for him here though.
‘As I said, the evidence is circumstantial, but the coincidence of murders occurring at the same time you were in each town cannot be ignored. It is our duty to investigate this further and your full cooperation is expected.’ It was, in an odd way, gratifying to see that the DI’s tone of voice had the same effect on others that it had on me. I could see the pink spreading its way up Bennett’s neck and into his gargoyle face.
‘You expect me to cooperate fully when all I’ve had since I got into this stinking hole of a town has been harassment from you arseholes and hassles from the idiots who live here. I think you lot even sided up with the bloody protesters and enjoyed them having a go. You probably set the whole thing up.’ This statement came complete with gesticulations, and as his hands waved in the vicinity of my face, I could feel my blood pressure ratchet up. Considering it was me who’d had to deal with the protesters – and pretty damned well, I thought – and me who had apparently harassed him, I didn’t appreciate being referred to as an arsehole. He steamed on, oblivious. ‘I think you like giving us all this bad publicity, making us look like a bunch of crooks, giving us a bad name. You’ve got it in for us, you have. You pigs, you’re all the bloody same. So you can take yourself and your heavy-handed crew here and fuck off as far as I am concerned.’
The mercury shot through the top of my barometer. ‘Mr Bennett,’ I said, my voice rather strident. ‘Firstly, I don’t like being referred to as an arsehole. Secondly, there is absolutely no call for being so rude.’ I hadn’t planned on opening my mouth, but it had done so, all of its own accord. My index finger rose to twitch right in front of his eyeballs and I took a step closer. ‘Bad manners and name-calling aren’t going to get you anywhere, so you can kindly start to behave yourself. You’re not a child, for Christ’s sake.’
My God, I sounded like a bloody schoolteacher. My mother would have been proud. My associates stood with their mouths open, gawping, but I didn’t care. Why the hell should I put up with that kind of crap? ‘You invited me to be here, Mr Bennett, you did. So don’t you dare turn around and insult me. If you took one moment to think about it, and used your brain, you should be glad we’ve come down to see you and not dragged you and your motley crew off to the police station. Then there’d be plenty of bad publicity to worry about. So for God’s sake grow up and cut it out.’ I glared up at him, hands on hips, making it perfectly clear I expected an apology. It was eventually extended.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘It’s just we get the same old shit everywhere we go and I get sick to death of it.’ Well, accusation wasn’t the only shit following them around this time. There seemed to be a few bodies too. It wasn’t him who was getting sick to death. He seemed to have ignored that.
‘Ahem.’ The DI grabbed my attention before I got started again. ‘The detective constable is right.’ I must have made an impression; he finally got my rank right. ‘At this stage we are making initial enquiries, not finger-pointing or accusing. The sooner we get cooperation, the sooner we can have the matter cleared up and you can get on with your business. If we don’t get it, you’ll give us no option but to close down your operation until we have finished with our investigations.’
‘You can’t do that. We have shows booked out every night. It would cost us a fortune to cancel. You’d ruin us.’
‘Well, if you and your employees assist fully in our investigation, we should be able to avoid it. It’s up to you.’
It’s amazing what an incentive the almighty dollar and the bottom line can be. It prompted Bennett very quickly to oblige, however begrudgingly. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked in a voice laden with resentment.
It didn’t go unnoticed by the DI. ‘This is a very serious situation, Mr Bennett. For a start, we will need a full itinerary of where the circus has been and when. Days and times travelled. The times of your shows and a roster of who performed in each and when people had free time. We are going to need to speak to every member of the circus, performers and hands, and we’ll need to see the passports of all your overseas acts. It would be helpful if you could encourage them to be accommodating, and then we can be done as soon as possible.’
‘Christ, you don’t ask for much; that’s going to take for ever. We’ve got fifty-nine people here, and we’ve got to have rehearsals, as well as do the shows. How long is all this going to take?’
‘It will take as long as we need it to. As you said, we have a lot of people to talk to, so if you work with us, we can get on with it and interview everyone down here. If we get any grief from anyone, then we’ll take the whole show down to the station. Do you understand me?’
‘Perfectly.’ His chest had caved somewhat, and shoulders slumped. DI Johns’ posture had puffed up as Terry Bennett’s had deflated.
‘Do your overseas acts speak English? Do you have interpreters?’
‘They all have at least one whose English is good.’
‘We’re also going to need fingerprint and DNA samples from everyone.’
‘Bloody hell. Do you want a pound of flesh too?’ Mr Bennett did sarcasm with polished expertise.
DI Johns shot him a look that would have withered a concrete fencepost. ‘You have the right to have a lawyer present for all of the interviews. Can you nominate one, or would you like me to provide a list of local lawyers in Dunedin?’
‘I’m not paying money to any blood-sucking lawyer. No one here has done anything wrong. I can assure you, you’re wasting your time, and ruining us in the process. No, no lawyers. I’ll sit in with each of my people – make sure you lot don’t talk them into a corner.’ It was so comforting to see the regard with which he held the police.
‘I’m afraid you can’t do that. You are a potential suspect yourself, so you will not be able to be present at the interviews with your crew.’
‘Oh, fucking hell, you bastard.’ Terry Bennett spat the insult out. ‘You think I killed all those people, do you?’
I waited for the explosion from DI Johns but was disappointed. The DI showed great restraint and didn’t take umbrage at the querying of his parentage. ‘No,’ he said with exaggerated calm, ‘it is a conflict of interest to have you present at the interviews, so to protect everyone’s right to proper counsel and a fair interview, you cannot be present, and I’d recommend very strongly they have a lawyer. Especially if some of them do not speak good English. You wouldn’t want any of your people to unwittingly incriminate themselves because they didn’t understand the questions, would you?’
‘Well, no.’
‘And in the event that one of them, or some of them were brought to trial, we have to ensure that procedures have been properly followed.’
‘In the event one or some of them were brought to trial because they’d killed anyone, they’d have to deal with me first.’ Although Terry Bennett tried to deliver this line with great bravado, I could see the bluster had been sucked out of him and the full realisation of what was about to happen and its ramifications were sinking in. Besides the huge disruption to his operation and, no doubt, a fair amount of public scrutiny, he had to face the possibility that one or more of his company were responsible for murder. He’d take that pretty personally. Also, once word got out the police were investigating the circus, I imagined gate sales would diminish somewhat. This must have occurred to him too.
‘Okay, so if we cooperate fully with this, will you guys keep the fact Darling Brothers is under suspicion a secret from the press? If it gets out, we’ll be crucifie
d. No one will bring their kids along to see the show if they think we could be involved in this. You’re still supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in this country, so it’s your duty to protect our rights too, you know.’
I looked at the DI to see what his reaction would be. I’d have thought he’d get some sick satisfaction from destroying a man like Bennett.
‘I can’t make any guarantees. Word has a way of sneaking out on these things. But I do think it is in the public’s and the police’s best interests for this to be as discreet as possible. Your set-up here is very open and visible, so we don’t want any scenes if we can avoid it. I’ll see what we can do.’
Perhaps I’d underestimated the DI. But he did have a very good point. We’d already had to deal with hot-headed animal-rights activists and adolescent stupidity. The last thing we needed now was a mob making judgements and meting out their own form of justice.
18
My eyes homed in on the bridge of the man’s nose. His face was adorned with a vast array of piercings that looked like a bad case of metallic acne. But it was the dumbbell through the bridge of his nose that drew my sick fascination. Sick being the operative word. My stomach gave a lurch whenever he twitched his nose, which unfortunately for me was with the frequency of a rat sniffing out lunch. Every time my eyes went to engage his, they skewed off target and found themselves back on his nose. It was fortunate, then, that I wasn’t conducting the interview and therefore wasn’t the focus of his attention, otherwise I would have come across as unforgivably rude. Somehow, I didn’t rate this guy as a suspect. It was difficult to imagine someone so identifiable committing the crimes, unless he was very careful and wore a balaclava to hide his appearance. If it came to it, we’d have a hell of a time trying to find comparable people for a line-up. Any witness would pick this guy out in an instant.
I would have loved to have been the one asking the questions, but as usual, I was riding shotgun and had been given the brief to be a warm body in the room. A warm body with a good memory and a pen and pad to record the interview. Being secretary was a girl’s job, after all. It was no surprise as to who took great delight in informing me of my role. Although DI Johns had to suffer the indignity of Terry Bennett’s insistence on my presence, he still found a way to remind me of my station in life. One small consolation was I didn’t have to type the interviews up, but I tried to keep my scrawl as legible as possible for the lovely bevy of typists at the station. You couldn’t pay me to do their job. It felt like a bit of a joke though. In this age of electronic wizardry and digital everything, why the hell were we still taking notes with something as archaic as a pen and paper? Modern policing at its budget-restricted best.
The interviews had been set up in a couple of the residential trailers and this one was incredibly plush and comfortable. It also had Tardis-like qualities. From the outside, it looked the size of two police cells max, but inside, it felt almost palatial. Wood-panelled cupboards adorned one wall, with a space for an enormous LCD television. Even a circus caravan could manage better technology than we did, it seemed. At one end, was a kitchen larger and with more bench space than my old one and a damned sight more modern. Running away with the circus might not be such a hardship after all, I thought. I poked my head through the door to look at the sleeping quarters and they were just as roomy. It must have been a family living here as there were a number of children’s toys scattered about. In the background I could hear a washing machine in the last throes of the spin cycle. It all had an unexpected level of luxury, although I imagined wet days with children cramped in here would soon take the gloss off.
Despite my fascination for the interviewee’s facial decorations I had to suppress a yawn. Bennett’s insistence on my presence had proven to be a backhanded gift. This was the fifth person through this morning and I was already struggling to keep up the concentration levels. I recalled Terry Bennett’s comment that they had fifty-odd staff and cringed. It was going to be a long few days. I fervently hoped we’d be able to eliminate the majority very quickly, just to keep me sane. A bit selfish, I know, especially as I’d been whinging mightily about being left out all the time. DI Johns was getting the last laugh. It was beginning to feel more like a punishment to be here than not.
Roll on lunchtime.
19
Twenty-four down, God knows how many to go. My hand was cramped into a permanent claw. Oh, how I wished we could just record the damned things. After a day of hard-out questioning, we were none the wiser, although we did have three confessions to possession of pot, one illegal overstayer and, unusually, one confession to unlawful connection with an animal. Ugh. The animal-rights lobby would have a field day if that one got out.
The interviews weren’t proceeding as quickly as we’d have liked. Many were drawn out by the language barrier and the need for interpreters. Over half of the company were overseas acts from places such as Mongolia and South America. It was vital that people understood fully what they were being questioned about, or else misinformation would confuse the case and their lawyers could jump on it as a technical out. I suspected it was a degree of confusion that had led to the rather distasteful confession involving the miniature pony.
There had been concern voiced among the CIB that the killer or killers would bolt now the police were investigating, but for the moment all circus members were present and accounted for. Fear of what Mr Bennett would do to them probably helped there. I supposed if they did do a runner, at least we’d know who we were looking for.
It was also a case of so far so good as far as publicity was concerned. The police presence here had not attracted any media attention as yet. The protests and student pranks from Friday provided a valid excuse for our presence. In an ironic way, Mr Bennett should have felt grateful towards them. Yeah, right.
Cassie the elephant was in her usual spot beside the big top, in full view of the public. That position would have been carefully chosen to act as a kid magnet – aw, Mummy, look at the elephant, can we go see her? Can we go and see the circus, Mum? Come on, can we go? Whining children were a wonderful sales and marketing tool, and Terry Bennett’s product placement made the most of their pulling power.
‘Hello, old girl. Hi Cassie,’ I called out. Her body didn’t budge, but her eyes moved to find me. I didn’t know if it was the standard look for elephants, but to me she looked melancholy and horribly bored. Her only company were the miniature ponies corralled next door. The ankle strap and chain would have contributed. She was roped off to keep the public at a respectful distance, and there was an additional electric fence a metre within the rope one. I guessed it wouldn’t look good to zap kids who got a bit too close. I’d been told Cassie was generally amenable, but occasionally prone to grumpiness. Who wouldn’t be in her situation? I was a farm girl, and in New Zealand we were accustomed to having our animals roaming about freely in huge lush, green paddocks, grazing at will. We were proud of our wide-open spaces and free-range approach to animal welfare, so to see such a large, magnificent creature such as Cassie chained up rankled. Surely, someone could at least have cleaned up the poo. And to see the lions and monkeys claustrophobically caged made me straight-out angry. I could understand why the activists lobbied to free them. Mind you, freedom wasn’t always everything it was cracked up to be. Every time I walked through the halls of the Otago Museum I ventured up into the Animal Attic. I’d wander its Victorian-style displays of taxidermy heaven, and stop for a look at Sonia and Sultan, escapees from Circus Carlos during its notorious visit to Lawrence way back in the seventies. The lions’ bid for emancipation had stuffed them, literally. Thinking about these magnificent creatures brought to mind visions of African savannahs and herds of wild animals freely roaming the plains. The stark contrast of Cassie’s confinement was pitiful. If elephant body language was anything like human body language, she was as miserable as hell. How on earth could you cheer up an elephant? I made a point of doing my bit by coming for a chat whenever possible.
‘I’m off, back to the station now. You take care and I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I’d try and have a word with her handler in the morning, see if I could give her a pat or a rub down. She was a tad bigger than Dotty, my old horse back home, and hopefully not as prone to farting, but I was sure I’d manage. Her handler was on the interview list first thing, which would give me a chance for a chat. I didn’t think Mr Bennett would mind. He’d think it meant I was warming to them all and was on his side. Not bloody likely.
20
‘Gidday, sunshine. How’s your day been?’ Maggie wandered into my room. Well, it was my room in name only. In reality, it was still the domain of its previous occupant, the talented Caitlin, as evidenced by the array of skiing posters and paraphernalia adorning every available space on the walls. There was also a significant display of trophies, medals and silverware on the bookshelf, testament to the high level of achievement the Kershaw girls had attained in their chosen sport. Caitlin’s twin, also a world-class skier, had a similar overachiever look happening in her room. On the plus side, Caitlin and Lisette had achieved the ultimate of earning sports scholarships to the University of Colorado, so not only did their parents avoid having to pay a small ransom for their tertiary education and ongoing sports costs, they no longer had to be the long-suffering, but supportive taxi service to every freezing-cold, ice-ridden and accessible-only-by-goat-track ski field in the country. I didn’t do skiing. As far as I was concerned, snow was just a damned nuisance that, when I was home on the farm, always came at just the right time to kill off the lambs and cut off the electricity. If pressed, I’d consent to building a snowman, but I failed to see the fascination.
It wasn’t all skiing, skiing, skiing for the girls though. This room had a corner shrine devoted to Brad Pitt. Apparently, even teenage sportaholics had hormones.