by Vanda Symon
‘I worked damned hard to get in and I pull my weight. I’ve got as much right to be here as anyone else,’ I said, jumping on the defensive. Despite trying to convince myself otherwise, I really cared what people thought of me, and the backward glances and snide comments I sometimes got chipped away at my self-confidence.
‘We know you do, and it’s nothing against you personally. But what I’m saying is, you should tread careful. There are some people around here who would love to see you take a fall. You should watch your back, especially now.’
27
Before I went and did my duty at the circus, there was a small task pressing on my mind. It remained to be seen how my request would go down, but I took a breath and tried anyway.
‘Hi, Jeff,’ I said, as I hung around the corner of the door into Forensics Services. Jeff Arnott was one of the police photographers and shared office space with the SOCOs. They occupied the farthest corner of the building.
‘DC Shephard, we don’t usually see you down here. What can I do for you?’ Jeff was a genial character and greying a bit around the edges. When he wasn’t busy photographing blood and guts and the detritus of crime, he was out shooting birds, of the feathered variety, with his camera. He’d done quite well at it, especially with the native birds – won some comps and a vibrant shot of a tui had even graced the cover of a magazine. I hoped he’d be sympathetic to my cause, but these days one couldn’t make assumptions.
‘Have you processed the personnel photos from Operation Sparrow yet?’ That name grated every time I used it, which wasn’t often.
‘They’re next on the agenda. Why? Was there something specific you were looking for?’
‘There’s something about one of the circus crew, a man named Zarvo the clown, or Zarvo Krunic, that rang a few alarms.’
‘He’s not on the list of possibles. What was the problem with him?’
How did you describe woman’s intuition and a finely attuned bullshit-o-meter? ‘I don’t know exactly. He seemed to have something to hide, made me feel suspicious.’
‘By the sounds of it, half of them did. Why do you want to single him out?’
My gut instincts were usually pretty sharp and this chap had set things jangling for me, for whatever reason. But I could tell that a definite answer here was more likely to get cooperation, so I said the first thing that jumped to mind. ‘He looked vaguely familiar, so I was wanting to check his photo out against wanted lists and missing persons.’
‘Does the head guy know you’re doing this?’ He inclined his head in the general direction of my tormenter’s office. I wondered if every detective in Dunedin had their lines of enquiry queried like this or if it was a special treat reserved just for me? All this extra attention was getting tedious, so I took the direct approach.
‘No, he doesn’t specifically know I’m checking this individual out. It’s a bit of an initiative of my own. Why, are you going to dob me in?’
He gave me an appraising kind of a look, then smiled – the warm, genuine variety. ‘Nah, he’s been a right royal arsehole towards you. Come back in an hour and I’ll have it ready.’
28
What a shit of a morning.
I needed therapy.
There was always chocolate, but my stash of portable therapy was in the glovebox of my car, and that was too far away to merit the effort.
Retail therapy might work. But there was that little prerequisite of money.
It was a bit early in the day for a good stiff drink, and anyway, I still had to go back to work this afternoon.
There was nothing for it; I pulled out my cellphone and texted Maggie: Meet at the Good Oil in 10 for lunch? I was one of those strange creatures that couldn’t bear to disembowel words in text messages. It was full spelling, grammar and punctuation for me. Maggie’s reaction to my long-winded missives involved the words ‘anal’ and ‘retentive’. She had no such qualms, as indicated by her rapid-response reply: (-:
Twenty minutes later and I had my laughing gear wrapped around a bagel filled with roast lamb and token green stuff. Maggie had gone for the more civilised smoked-salmon option. We both had our standard flat white, except I adulterated mine with sugar; she didn’t. There was an enormous slice of raspberry and coconut cake in the middle, with two forks, and yoghurt rather than cream – our nod to healthy eating.
‘You know,’ Maggie said, around a mouthful. ‘You could go for harassment, if he continues to pick on you like that.’
‘Yeah, right. He’d deny it for a start, and probably chip in that it was all my doing and that I was incompetent. He acts like he’s God, and knows it all. Just because he’s got a flash paper degree and they’ve given him some rank, he seems to think he can ride roughshod over everyone.’
‘Smithy and your workmates would back you up though?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. I get the feeling it would be like career suicide to stand up and take him on. No one’s ever done it before, and it sounds like there have been plenty of officers who have experienced his special brand of attention. They’re all scared of him.’
‘The class bully?’
‘The class bully,’ I agreed. ‘But with the strategic advantage of being the boss.’
‘Bugger. There’s no easy answer, then.’
‘No, I just have to grin and bear it.’
‘That’s just so wrong.’
‘Yup.’
Maggie dealt with another mouthful of cake and then pointed the fork in my direction. ‘Tell you something: the Sam I know wouldn’t take that kind of crap from anybody.’
I smiled. ‘That’s true, but this Sam is feeling a bit ground down by it all.’
‘That’s never held you back before. You’ve always been the champion of the downtrodden, the fighter for justice. That’s why you joined the police in the first place. Don’t you think it’s time you championed yourself?’
She had a point.
‘Are you saying I should push back?’
‘Someone’s got to. What have you got to lose?’
I could think of quite a substantial list of things to lose, but bugger it, Maggie was right. If I didn’t stand up for myself, no one was going to do it for me, and that arsehole would continue to think it was acceptable to treat people like shit. Although it could end in disaster, and scared the bejesus out of me, it was time I put my big girl pants on and called him out.
29
The unexpected assault of the cellphone going off next to my head wrenched me violently into the here and now. I’d been in the middle of a rather unpleasant dream involving me, the police-squad room and the sudden realisation I wasn’t wearing any pants. This would be bad at the best of times, but in this dream, I was addressing my colleagues about the Bateman case. They hadn’t noticed yet, and my mind had been going rapid-fire, trying to think of a way to get out of the predicament before I made a total fool of myself. My panic was reflected in the twisted mangle of sheets I found myself entwined in on waking. It was dark, my heart rate was through the roof and my hands shook like a druggie on a severe downer. Despite this, the cellphone’s intrusion had done me a favour.
The time on the display screen glared 5.14 a.m. Who the hell rang anyone at this time of the morning? Good news never came at this hour. My mind leaped immediately to Dad.
‘Hello?’ I said, my voice foreign and raspy.
‘DC Shephard?’ Oh God, that sounded formal.
‘Yes.’
‘Dunedin Watch House.’ The chest tightness eased a fraction, but the other ill effects of the adrenaline rush remained. ‘Look, there’s been a bit of a development at the circus.’
‘What’s happened?’ It must have been bad for them to be calling in off-duty officers at this time of day.
‘A fire, someone’s torched the place. It’s pandemonium, you need to get there straight away. The owner specifically requested you.’
Shit.
‘I’m on my way.’
It was quite possibly the stranges
t and most surreal sight I’d ever witnessed. It would have been oddly beautiful if the ramifications weren’t so hideous.
The orange and red hues of the still-leaping flames shimmered through a billowing pall of black smoke and cast the pre-dawn sky aglow in a Dante-esque vision. The now-exposed poles of the big top, jutting up like bones amid the still-burning carcass of the tent, reflected the staccato flashes of red and blue made by the fire units and police cars crowding the scene. The flames hadn’t restricted themselves to the main attraction and I could make out two trailer homes and the ticket office alight as I pulled up to the scene.
The sight was bad enough, but when I opened the car door and got a hit of the audio track, my blood ran cold. The sound of the animals screaming yanked at some primitive part of my being and I found myself running towards the conflagration as fast as I was able. Fire fighters, police and staff were swarming like ants in seeming disorder. I saw a face I recognised from the previous day’s interviews and grabbed at her arm as she ran past, terrified.
‘Where’s Bennett?’ I yelled.
She tried to pull out of my grasp, before recognition crossed her face and she stopped still, sobbing. ‘Cassie, he’s after Cassie.’
Shit, the elephant. I sprinted around the side of the main area to where she’d been secured when I last saw her. The area was full of roadies, frantically moving the animals away to safety, but I could see no sign of Cassie. The air was rank with the stench of burning plastic, a lung-searing, eye-watering miasma. It must have been the seating in the big top that was fuelling the flames.
I grabbed at another hand and yelled, ‘Bennett, where’s Bennett?’
My eyes followed the pointing arm and I got a glimpse of the manmountain heading away in the opposite direction. I ran after him, weaving through the throng of desperate, wild-eyed people. After colliding with a semi-clad man also at full tilt, I picked myself back up off the ground, the air knocked out of me. The sound of the monkeys’ screeching grated at every nerve ending in my body like a thousand nails scratching blackboards. I tried to ignore that and the pain in my knee and continued on.
‘Terry,’ I yelled out, ‘Terry, wait.’
His head swung around and I saw desolation etched into his face. He grabbed me by the shoulders when I caught up to him.
‘Cassie, she’s gone berserk, you’ve got to help me.’
‘What do you mean she’s gone berserk?’
Tears rolled down his stricken face. ‘A burning chunk of tent canvas landed on her. She’s pulled her chain, she’s hurt and panicked. She’s already trampled someone.’
Shit.
‘What can I do?’ I asked, not having any clue as to how he thought I could deal with a four-tonne rampaging elephant. It was then I noticed that he’d been trying to hide something under his coat. He pulled out a shotgun, a single-shot, 12-gauge shotgun. My eyes dropped to the gun, then raised back to his face.
‘We’ve got to catch up with her.’
‘Which way?’
He pointed across the Oval towards the highway bordering the far side and the major intersection on to the Southern Motorway. It didn’t take much imagination to work out how much havoc she could cause there even at this hour of the morning. I took off running across the sports ground and assumed from the heavy footfalls behind me that Terry Bennett was following. I hoped she hadn’t travelled too far, as once she got out to the road there were a myriad of directions she could go in. I wondered what Terry meant by ‘trampled’. Accidentally hurt in the rush to escape? Or had she been driven to do someone serious harm?
Evidence of her path was nearby as I broke through by the low hedge bordering the road.
I ran up to the van, which was tipped over on the driver’s side. The windscreen was broken and a man was scrambling out through the shattered glass.
I helped him get to his feet. There was sizable dent in the side of the vehicle, now pointing skywards.
‘Are you alright?’ I asked. There was blood running down the side of his head, but otherwise he seemed uninjured.
‘Huh? Bugger me, I just got hit by a fucking elephant. I’m sure it was an elephant. What the fuck’s an elephant doing in the middle of the road?’ Under normal circumstances if any driver had uttered those words to me, I would have had them lined up for an evidential breath test.
‘Which way?’ I asked. ‘Which way did she go?’ I heard Terry thunder up behind me, breathing so hard I thought his lungs would explode.
‘That way, I think.’ He pointed further south along Anderson’s Bay road towards the peninsula. ‘Fuck me, that was an elephant, right?’
‘Yup.’
She had headed towards the most-open ground. It should make her easier to find than if she’d gone into the industrial area, where there were lots of places to lose her. It seemed absurd to think of losing something the size of an elephant, but then, this was turning into one hell of a strange day. I peered up the road and saw a distant set of headlights make a sudden swerve to the right. There was only one thing I could think of that would cause that kind of manoeuvre.
‘Come on, she’s this way.’ I took off on foot again. Thank God, it was early morning and there weren’t many cars around. I did a quick check then darted across the huge intersection that led onto the motorway on my right. The chaos she could cause in peak traffic didn’t bear thinking about. The rail overpass loomed ahead and I got about fifty metres further up the road when I heard a strangled shout from behind me. I swung around in time to see Terry Bennett hit the ground and roll, hands clutching at his chest. By the time I got back to him his breaths were laboured and gasping, his ashen colour obvious despite the orange cast thrown by the overhead sodium street lights. Beads of perspiration joined to form small rivulets of sweat running down the sides of his face.
‘Shit, Terry, hang on, I’ll go get help.’
‘No, no.’ He clutched for his chest again and then my arm. ‘Sorry, arggghh.’ With his other hand he thrust the shotgun at me. ‘I’ll be okay, go.’ He tried to nod in the direction of Cassie. ‘You have to,’ he gasped.
‘No, I can’t do that. Don’t ask me to shoot her.’
‘She killed people. She’s injured, she’s panicked and she’s dangerous. You have to do it. You have to.’ He grit his teeth, sucking in air between them, while tears flowed from the corners of his eyes.
He was right, and it had to be done before she did more harm. I could hear sirens in the distance, as more emergency services headed for the scene. But there was no one else here now who could deal with this except me.
‘How?’ I said quietly. ‘Head or heart?’
‘Head.’
‘With a shotgun?’
‘They’re rifled slugs, they can do the job.’
‘How many rounds do I have?’
‘Two. One’s already loaded, the other’s in my coat pocket.’
Jesus.
I felt in his pocket until I found the other round. The size of it gave some reassurance.
‘You’ll be okay?’
He nodded, the movement clearly causing pain. ‘You have to get this done before she hurts someone else.’ His breathing, already laboured, shuddered with sobs. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The sight of this broken man and the thought of the task ahead led me to do something I would never have believed possible, considering my feelings towards him. I bent down and kissed Terry Bennett on the forehead. When I looked up, I could see the van man running towards us. Hopefully, he’d be able to get some help. Right now, my priorities were elsewhere. I got up, and holding the shotgun army-style in front of me, began to run up the road. Despite the nearness of so many police and emergency staff, I’d never felt quite so alone. I’d often gone out hunting with my dad and brothers on the farm, but there was one hell of a difference between potting a few possums and the odd deer, to having to hunt down an elephant – an elephant I considered to be a friend.
The night sky tinged watery blue at the horizon, which al
ong with the orange fiery glow to the north, the distant sirens and the toots from passing motorists added to the surreal nature of the situation. I supposed, to people who had just seen an elephant on the road, the sight of a woman running with a bloody great gun was not so out of the ordinary.
How would Cassie react to the sight of me? Would she recognise me? I thought elephants were supposed to have poor vision, and it was still pretty dark. Could she smell me? Would she recognise a gun, see me as a threat? Maybe, with the state she was in she’d see any human as a threat. If the first round missed or didn’t drop her I was going to have to reload real fast. If I stuffed this up completely, there was no plan B, and I could be left with an injured and very pissed-off elephant. ‘Stop it, Shep,’ I muttered aloud. I was thinking too much. I had to focus, trust my instincts and not succumb to analysis paralysis.
Suddenly, there she was: two hundred metres ahead of me, standing in the middle of the road, her back towards me, seemingly mesmerised by the headlights of oncoming traffic. Several cars had pulled over onto the side of the road – I only hoped no one would be stupid enough to get out of their car and approach her.
‘Don’t be dumb, please don’t be dumb,’ I said to myself as I upped my pace. Now I was closer I could see she was waving her head and trunk from side to side. She slapped at the ground with her trunk. I read that as not a good thing.