The Ringmaster

by Vanda Symon

  ‘Well, my day started off well, deteriorated by noon and degraded into the truly tedious by mid-afternoon,’ I eventually replied with a half-suppressed yawn.

  ‘It was one better than mine then, which skipped the starting off well bit and jumped directly to tedium.’ Maggie plonked herself down on the bed.

  ‘After all that time looking forward to being a student, the reality bites, huh?’

  ‘No, no, I’m loving it, actually. It’s just this morning’s lab seemed a little dull for a gal who’s spent her working life playing with microscopes, animal body parts and cool electronic equipment. Their idea of a lab and mine are a little bit different. I’m sure it will improve as we get further into the course.’

  Maggie had ditched the bright lights of the meat-processing plant at Mataura for a change in direction and further education at the University of Otago. She was indulging her fascination for human behaviour and studying psychology. I had no idea what she meant to do with it when she’d finished, but for now, she’d escaped her former trapped-in-rural-purgatory life for the big smoke – Dunedin, or Dunners as she affectionately referred to the place. I must admit to having been tempted by some of the courses on offer myself, but the extra papers I had to do for detective training kept me more than busy enough.

  ‘You studying tonight?’ I asked, as I pulled some clothes out of the wardrobe.

  ‘I should be, but I could easily be tempted by a better offer.’

  ‘That’s displaying a complete lack of dedication, you know.’

  ‘Maybe, but I can blame it on you. You shouldn’t tempt me with distractions when you know I’m so easily led. You’re being irresponsible. Great friend you’ve turned out to be.’

  ‘Think of it as saving your sanity. A mental health break. Anyway, there’s a do for one of the work guys, a fortieth birthday at the Trough and Porker, and I don’t feel like flying solo. You should come along and meet some more of the gang. You never know, you might score yourself a date.’

  ‘Oh yeah, ’cos I want to date a copper.’ They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. Maggie had a first-class Honours in it. ‘I happen to know what it’s like living with the police. I had your fine example, remember. There’s no way in hell I’d ever date a policeman. God, no.’ The statement was accompanied by a shudder.

  ‘We’re not all that bad.’

  ‘Right, none of you are overbearing, work-obsessed, pathologically suspicious individuals who can’t switch off from the job? If policemen aren’t that bad, why don’t you date one?’

  I threw Maggie the look. ‘You know the golden rule: you don’t screw the crew. Besides, most of them are already taken.’

  ‘By the love-blind who haven’t learned yet?’

  ‘That’s the one. They say there’s only one job worse than being a copper, and that’s being attached to a copper.’

  ‘I’m sure their kids are thrilled too, especially when mum or dad turns up to break up the underage booze fest party they weren’t supposed to be at.’ Maggie gestured towards the wardrobe door. ‘So what are you going to wear?’

  ‘I take that as a yes, you’re coming?’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, I’ll sacrifice my precious study time to spare you the horror of feeling alone and abandoned by your friends.’

  ‘So very big of you. I can tell it will be a major imposition. It’s a casual night, so jeans, jumper, nothing flash.’

  ‘You’re not out to impress, then?’

  ‘Nah, got to give the other girls a chance sometimes.’

  21

  ‘You’re a rat-fink, two-faced cow.’

  My outburst made Maggie laugh all the more. So to further demonstrate my disapproval, I gave her a thump on the arm, which resulted in her having to grab the nearest tabletop to stop from falling over in hysterics. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you did up there,’ I said, waving my finger in front of her nose. ‘It’s okay for you with your little-Miss-Leading-Lady-diva-la-de-da perfect singing voice.’ It must have been the alcohol, because I couldn’t think of any other way Maggie could have enticed me up on to that stage let alone sing karaoke with her. And that was the point – it was supposed to have been with her, but I saw how far the bitch kept the microphone away from her mouth, so all the poor sods listening got was my voice coming over loud and unfortunately clear. It was also rather unfortunate that a large number of the audience were my work colleagues, who were by now in no doubt as to my singing inabilities. My reputation did have one fighting chance – Sergeant Frater was now onstage butchering ‘Unchained Melody’. Surely that would displace my efforts in their collective memories.

  ‘Ah, God, you were funny, I can’t believe you fell for that again.’ Maggie had finally managed to exert enough control over herself to be able to speak, but her words came interspersed with gasps of air. Even I had to smile at the reference to ‘again’. ‘Gotcha. Man, you’re gullible. That, or it was the beer singing, and if it was the Speights, it was flat.’

  ‘Oh, ha-de-bloody-ha. I suppose you think you’re clever. It’s all your fault. You shouldn’t have given me that second one. You know what I’m like. One glass and I’m happy, two glasses and I’m anybody’s.’

  ‘For God’s sake, get this girl another drink.’ Unless Maggie’s voice had suddenly broken and cranked down to baritone, this wasn’t hers. I swung around to see if my memory banks served me correctly. It did indeed belong to the face I suspected.

  ‘Paul, hi. What are you doing here?’ I tugged down on the bottom of my top which had ridden up a bit. ‘You didn’t see my…’ I gestured towards the stage. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Haven’t expanded your repertoire any, I see. Still doing “The Midnight Special”.’

  Oh shit, he had seen me. And I didn’t need a mirror to know there was a rather full-on flush rising up my face. Paul Frost was a detective from Gore and I’d had a fair amount to do with him in my Mataura days – with work, that was, not in any romantic sense. Paul was your consummate ladies’ man. He looked a more rugged and, dare I say, sexier version of Ben Affleck, and he knew it. All his female work colleagues seemed to fall for his charms and had made fools of themselves vying for his attentions, but not me. He’d tried it on a couple of times, but didn’t seem to get the hint. I wasn’t interested. I didn’t do egos.

  ‘Maggie, lovely to see you as always. I gather you’re still leading your friend astray. Can’t believe she fell for that trick again, you must love being around someone so gullible.’

  ‘Easy target, keeps me amused,’ Maggie said, her face as pink as mine felt. She’d never admit it, but she was a sucker for his spell too. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you two alone to catch up, I’m sure you’ve got lots to talk about.’ She raised her eyebrows at me as she spoke, with one of those knowing expressions on her face, then the traitorous cow disappeared into the crowd.

  ‘Can I get you another drink?’ Paul asked, indicating towards the bar.

  I wasn’t one to turn down a free beverage. ‘God, yes. Please. I think I deserve one after my public humiliation.’

  ‘After that performance, I think the whole bar deserves one.’

  I thumped him one on the arm, for being so bloody rude.

  ‘Ow, hey now, be nice. I’m the one shouting the drink, remember,’ he said, rubbing his arm with great exaggeration. ‘Before you assaulted me, I was going to tell you how good it was to see you, and that you looked particularly lovely tonight, but I think I’ve changed my mind now. I’d forgotten about your violent streak.’

  ‘Keep up the rude comments and I’ll show you just how violent.’ Lovely, my arse.

  ‘Promises, promises,’ he said. ‘Now you’re just teasing me.’

  Trust Paul to twist things around.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself, sunshine,’ I shot back. I’d forgotten how annoying he could be, I thought, as I watched him head to the bar to get our drinks. Fortunately there wasn’t much of wait.

  ‘So what tears you away from the den of iniquity that
is Gore to the big-city lights of Dunedin?’ I asked. I’d hardly call the Trough and Porker big city lights, but it would do in a crunch.

  ‘Court case,’ he said, as he passed me my beer and moved towards a table. I popped my drink on the top of the leaner while I clambered up onto the barstool, never an elegant process.

  ‘Anything exciting?’

  ‘Well that depends if you find fraud exciting or not. I suspect not. It doesn’t do a hell of a lot for me.’

  ‘Corporate stuff?’

  ‘If you could call any business in Gore big enough to be corporate. Yeah, it’s the usual; greedy buggers who think everyone else is too thick to notice the ledgers aren’t quite what they should be or that the money is haemorrhaging out of the place.’

  ‘Don’t you just love it when the arrogant take a tumble?’ He didn’t notice the barb.

  ‘Yes, but we’ve got to prove it in court, and all its associated rigmarole. So here I am.’ He took a sip from his beer, and then fixed me in the eye with one of his intense looks. I sometimes wondered if he practised them in the mirror, as he seemed fully aware of the effect his set of crystalline blue eyes had on the fairer sex. ‘You’re looking well, Dunedin seems to be suiting you.’

  My hand drifted up and brushed away an errant lock of hair. ‘Thanks. It’s the fresh sea air, as opposed to the charming rendering aroma from the Mataura meat works. Slight improvement, don’t you think?’ I certainly didn’t miss that element of rural life. ‘Speaking of Mataura, do you think they miss me?’

  He threw back his head with a ha-ha. ‘Oh, you’re referred to often, but I’m not sure I could say it’s in entirely complimentary terms.’

  No surprise there. I didn’t endear myself when I managed to expose a major conspiracy that saw a few community leaders enjoying the pleasure of Her Majesty’s hospitality for the next few years. It wasn’t them so much I was thinking about though. ‘How’s Lockie getting on nowadays?’

  Paul flicked his look on to low beam and sat back. It was probably bad form to ask him about my ex, but I had to know. ‘About as good as can be expected. Did you know he was moving on?’

  ‘No.’ Though I was hardly surprised. His wife had been murdered and he had a young daughter to think of. I’d be getting out too. Come to think of it, I did. ‘Is he heading over to Queenstown to be nearer Gaby’s parents?’

  ‘Yeah. They’ve jacked him up with a job, and Gaby’s mum will look after Angel for him during the day. A new start.’

  Good, I thought. They’d have great support in Queenstown, and Leonore would love having her granddaughter close to hand.

  ‘Greetings, young Sam.’ I looked up to see Smithy arrive at the table, beer in hand. ‘Am I interrupting?’

  ‘Smithy, hi, no. Come, join us.’ I didn’t think these two had met, so I did the introductions. ‘Detective Malcolm Smith, this is Detective Paul Frost, an old colleague from Gore.’ The men shook hands and I was amused to note they completed the usual caveman sizing-up exercise that went with these occasions.

  ‘You’re a long way from home, detective. What brings you to Dunedin?’ Smithy asked, rather formally.

  ‘Please, call me Paul. I’m up for a court case, fraud, so who knows how long it could take. Hopefully no longer than a week, so I don’t have to bug Sam here by hanging around her too much.’

  ‘I can see how that would be a trial.’ They shared a look, and Smithy almost smiled.

  ‘You’re familiar with her charms, then. Are you the poor unfortunate that has to babysit her and hold her hand?’

  ‘Paul,’ I interjected, ‘be nice, I don’t need to be babysat by anyone, thank you very much.’

  ‘I don’t know, I seem to recall you’re pretty good at getting yourself into trouble. I bet she’s done that up here too,’ he said to Smithy. ‘Has she gotten up everyone’s nose yet?’

  ‘Rubbish. And I don’t get up people’s noses.’

  ‘How do you explain that DI Johns guy, then? I seem to recall you were so far up his nose all people could see were your shoes sticking out of his nostrils.’

  ‘You are so full of crap, Paul Frost. I get on fine with DI Johns, thank you.’ A Pinocchio porky if ever there was one. ‘I think I’ve—’

  ‘Ahem,’ Smithy cleared his throat. ‘I think I’ll leave you two to it, then. You seem to have a bit to talk about. Nice to meet you, Paul.’ With that he picked up his glass, gave me an odd look I couldn’t quite interpret and disappeared into the crowd.

  Paul was wearing a smug expression when I turned my attention back to him. ‘He fancies you,’ he said.

  ‘Who? Smithy?’

  ‘Who else? Of course Smithy. He likes you. He was jealous.’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody absurd. Who’d be jealous of you?’ I had to admit he had seemed a bit frosty towards Paul, which wasn’t like him at all. ‘Anyway, he’s happily married, and got kids.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean a thing. I tell you, you need to watch him. He’s got the hots for you.’

  That notion was straight-out daft. ‘Paul Frost, don’t be so juvenile. You are so full of crap. Just because you can’t keep your hormones under control doesn’t mean that every man out there is on the prowl for anything in a skirt.’ The alcohol must have loosened my tongue a tad. Considering I didn’t know Paul that well, I was giving him a fair amount of rather personal stick. But he deserved it, making stupid allegations like that. Smithy was a work colleague and a friend. So was his wife. He was an honourable kind of a guy. Of course he wasn’t interested in me like that.

  ‘Oh, you are defensive. Hit a raw nerve, did I?’ I gave him a look that could have withered an ocean. He must have realised he’d pushed this one a bit far because he quickly picked up his beer and looked elsewhere as he took a draught. ‘I hear you guys may have something big on your hands. The case sounds interesting.’

  Nice save.

  ‘You got that one right.’

  ‘We should hook up while I’m in town, go grab dinner or something. We could talk about what’s happening in your case. It’s got to be more fun than my fraud caper.’

  It was my turn to laugh. He’d got me a bit too riled even to contemplate the notion. Why would I want to spend time with a juvenile, egotistical larrikin like him? All he seemed to do was irritate the crap out of me.

  I slid down off my stool, grabbed my drink from the table and gave him a parting shot as I went to search out Maggie. ‘No way. You’ve gone and stuffed yourself way too far up my nose for that.’

  22

  ‘How’s the head this morning?’ Maggie asked, as I walked into the kitchen to hunt out breakfast and a serious dose of caffeine.

  ‘It’s fine, I didn’t have that much to drink. Weeknight. Besides, I need to keep a clear head, or more to the point keep awake, with more of those flaming interviews today. Yesterday’s dragged on for ever. It’s going to be a long haul.’ I looked in Maggie’s direction and made an appraisal of last night’s effects. She didn’t look too shabby. Mind you, her version of looking like a wreck was more chic than I could muster on a good day. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m good,’ she said. ‘Raring to go, in fact. Got the fun stuff happening today. We’re into the forensic psychology part of the course where we get to see what makes the nutters tick.’

  That actually sounded appealing.

  ‘Do you want to swap? I’ll go check out the inner workings of the nutters and you can listen to the lurid confessions of the circus folk.’ Anything to help me figure out what was going on in the head of the nutter who took it upon himself to violently kill and dump a young woman in a river. The vision of Rose-Marie, face down in the Leith popped into my head and my body responded with its obligatory shudder.

  ‘Oh, Sam, someone walk on your grave?’ Aunty Jude wandered into the kitchen, a vision of meticulous style and grooming. I wish my family carried the gene responsible for that degree of elegance.

  ‘No, not mine,’ I said, as I sorted out an industrial-size coff
ee, the dreaded instant variety, not the flash stuff. ‘You’re looking lovely, where are you off to today?’

  The responding bashful smile showed she wasn’t immune to the admiration. ‘I’m doing my stint at the hospice this morning. And, thank you for the compliment. She’s such a nice girl, isn’t she, Maggie? You can stay in our home as long as you like.’ Jude had filled her days up admirably since the girls had flown for foreign shores, leaving a corresponding twin-shaped hole in her life. There was the volunteering at the hospice, she delivered Meals on Wheels once a week in the Mercedes and she’d become heavily involved with Altrusa, the community service organisation populated by already overworked professional and business women. She was also a lady who lunched and seemed to have an inordinate number of friends on the wine-and-dine or coffee-and-catch-up circuit.

  ‘Sam met up with a tall, handsome stranger at the bar last night,’ Maggie said, with a positively salacious tone.

  ‘Ooh, Sam, tell me more. This sounds good,’ Aunty Jude said.

  ‘Don’t believe a word she says. Anyway, he wasn’t a stranger.’

  ‘But he was handsome?’

  ‘Well, kind of.’ Paul Frost seemed to think he was, so that was all that mattered. ‘One of the Gore guys was up, that was all, and Maggie’s being a stirrer. She can’t comment because she was being rather chatty with a few of my colleagues, if I recall correctly. A number of them were giving her the eye.’

  ‘Maggie? It’s about time you had a boyfriend again; pretty girl like you shouldn’t be alone.’ A touch of pink infused Maggie’s face. I was pleased to see that aunts could be just as embarrassing as mothers. ‘I’m sure Sam’s workmates are nice young men. When do we get to meet one?’

  ‘Not in a million years. Uh-uh, not ever,’ Maggie said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t do policemen.’

  ‘Who do you do, then, Maggs?’ Aunty Jude asked with a mischievous glint.

  Maggie’s feigned shock and that question – delivered in Aunty Jude’s posh voice – made me laugh, unfortunately with a snort.