The Ringmaster

by Vanda Symon

  Just do it, Shep.

  ‘Sam, it’s Paul.’ He must have rung from outside the Courthouse, as the wind crackled his voice and the sounds of passing vehicles punctuated the message. ‘Hey, I’ve done a bit of looking into your little…’ Another four cars. I wished he’d move. ‘Registered to…’ A car. ‘Ron Ellis…’ A truck this time, a double, probably sheep, and two cars. ‘… near you guys, so I thought I’d pay him a little visit this morning after I get out of court.’ The truck must have prompted him to move as it gradually became easier to hear him. ‘Do you want to meet for lunch, say, Nova, at noon and I can let you know how I got on? Cheers.’

  That was a pretty smooth way of slipping in a lunch invitation. How could I refuse? At least I now knew the name of my mystery stalker. A name made him seem somehow smaller. A flesh-and-blood human being, like the rest of us.

  Lunch would be kind of nice, I supposed, and I was dying for a report on Paul’s little visit, but how would I fit it in with the parents? I’d have to chance it at the hospital and hope Mum was still up at the house, so I could get some decent time alone with Dad. It must have been driving him spare to have her hovering around like a blowfly, fussing and annoying the crap out of everyone. I grabbed my bag and headed for the stairs. My dad had endless patience, which was fortunate, considering who he chose to marry. He was Mr Steady Eddie, while she blustered her way through life. I didn’t know how he put up with her, let alone be so besotted with her, which he was. And it was mutual, even after all these years. Very sweet, but completely baffling as far as I was concerned.

  If I got a moment alone, I planned to tell Dad about Cassie. I needed some fatherly reassurance, a pat on the back and a ‘you did alright, kid’. I might even mention my little problem with Mister Ron Ellis. The way the name rolled around in my mind, caught my attention; it sounded somehow familiar. I stopped and stood, hands on hips while I ran it through my mental contacts list. Ron Ellis? I was pretty sure that was no one I knew or had been around in recent history. Dad had a hunting buddy Ron Allison, but he’d be at least sixty-five, and last I knew lived in the back blocks of Tapanui, which was a little bit further out than the middle of nowhere. The only things he stalked were deer and beer. A wave of chill washed from my scalp downwards as a name foremost in this morning’s briefing played over several times in my mind. Ron Ellis. Cameron Ellis. Cameron Ellison? Had I misheard Paul? Between the wind distortion and traffic noise had he been trying to say ‘Cameron Ellison’? Surely not. I turned around and sprinted back up the stairs.

  When I rang Paul’s number, it went straight to voicemail. Of course, he’d have turned it off for court. Damn it.

  I felt the restless itch I got when I knew there was something seriously wrong, something I should think of. Had Paul been trying to say a Cameron Ellison was my stalker? And coincidentally, a Cameron Ellison happened to be identified as this morning’s victim of an assault and robbery?

  No, that couldn’t be right. That was too creepy. The room had taken on a slightly distorted feel as my mind grappled with what was happening here.

  ‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ I said out loud to myself, repeatedly, like some mantra, while my brain chugged through this.

  The man who had likely been stalking me turns up dead, the day after I finally tell someone about my problem. Make that someones, plural. The only people who knew about the car thing were Paul, Uncle Phil and Maggie, who I finally fessed up to last night. I knew Maggs well enough to know she wouldn’t squash a spider, let alone kill a man, and I thought I knew Paul well enough to know his idea of ‘checking it out’ wouldn’t involve permanently checking out the weirdo. Which left Uncle Phil. Which didn’t make sense. He was the epitome of the mild-mannered and endearing absent-minded professor. But he was the only other person who knew, and he had offered to do something about it for me, ‘have a word’, as he’d put it. But this? Surely not.

  Coincidence?

  It had to be because there was no way in hell I could imagine Uncle Phil being a killer. Uncle Phil was the kind of man who would return a man’s wallet if he found it, not mug him for it. And God knew he didn’t need the money. But then, if that cold, twitching feeling between my shoulder blades was anything to go by then Cameron Ellison was not mugged and left for dead for the contents of his wallet; it was just made to look that way. A smokescreen to divert attention from the real reason for his death: that he chose the wrong person to stalk?

  That cold, twitching feeling spread back up into my scalp and across my cheeks. There had been some other, very complex and spectacular smokescreens happening recently. Could there be a connection?

  No, Sam, you’re making way too much out of a possible connection, based on a name you can’t even verify, from a dodgy-quality cellphone message. Be logical about this.

  But that was the scary thing, I was being logical about this – farfetched, but logical. What if Cameron Ellison was killed because he was stalking me, and what if the same person who did that, had also covered up some other killings? And by process of elimination, there was only one person left who knew, who fit the profile. Although even entertaining the idea of Uncle Phil as cold-blooded killer gave me the head-spins, the more I considered it, the less unlikely it became. There were some distinct parallels.

  I had to think rationally about this, before I leapt to some ludicrous conclusion. I’d run through the checklist, the profile Maggie and the hotshot had come up with for our serial killer.

  He would be highly intelligent – check.

  White male, thirty to fifty years of age – a little older than the range, but not too far out of that envelope – check.

  Someone at the university, in a position of power – check.

  Charming – check. I thought he was lovely. In fact, I had a real soft spot for him, which was why this mental exercise seemed so very wrong.

  Arrogant – not really, actually, not at all at home. Maybe he showed signs of it in the workplace. Maybe he hid it well. Otherwise, he was no more so than most males I knew.

  Disdain for authority figures, bad father relationship? Oh, Jesus. I thought about the box of ashes buried in the laundry cupboard, the box no one would talk about, and that cold feeling fingered my bowels and then clamped around them, hard.

  Freedom of movement, not drawing suspicion from loved ones? My mind raced onwards. He could do what he flaming well pleased, because Aunty Jude was never there. She was always off doing coffee or some committee thing or championing the latest cause. She’d said so herself – since the twins had left home, and they no longer had to run around after them, she’d had the time to devote to herself and her other interests. And Uncle Phil had had the time to devote to – what? Affairs with pretty young women? Planning elaborate murder schemes? His wife was never home. In fact, he probably resented the amount of time she spent on everything else but him. Had he found other entertainment? That would be one hell of a hobby.

  Knew the victim? Yes, although he said he only knew Rose-Marie in passing. Rose-Marie. My mind played back to some of our conversations. Rosie – he’d called her that, last night, hadn’t he? I was sure he’d called her Rosie. I’d only ever called her Rose-Marie when I’d talked about the case, and even then I’d been very careful not to mention particulars or divest any information about it, even when I’d asked his advice about university politics. Rosie – for me, it had seemed disrespectful to call her anything other than Rose-Marie, and he’d called her Rosie. Maybe he’d read that name in the newspaper, although they’d been fairly formal about it too. No, it was the way that he said it. Her name rolled off his tongue with familiarity. It suggested he knew her a little more informally than he made out.

  I felt myself break out in a cold sweat.

  It was all too unlikely, too circumstantial. Yet, there were enough intersecting points there to raise red flags, and the timing of this morning’s grim find couldn’t be ignored. I didn’t believe in coincidences. My body sure as hell was telling me it
wholeheartedly believed what my mind was busy trying to counter. Uncle Phil as murderous psychopath?

  It was a thought that beggared belief. How the hell was I going to be able to test that theory? And what if I was wrong? I’d look like an utter twat to my work colleagues – yet another wild theory from the interloper. And as for the Kershaws, accusations like that could ruin lives, and these were people I knew and loved.

  But what if I was right? The more I thought about it, the more the critical pieces fitted together, and the final scene was becoming clear, like one of those Wasgij puzzles where you looked back at the picture from the opposite viewpoint. Had I been unwittingly living with a killer? A killer whose practices appeared to be escalating and, if the most recent death was anything to go by, was tidying up loose ends? But was it loose ends, or was it something worse? If he had killed Cameron Ellison with the rather extreme and misguided aim of helping my situation, then that was not part of a master plan months in the making; it was less disciplined and more spur of the moment, warped and reactionary. It was more the action of someone losing patience, or self-control, and in a strange kind of a way, it was almost brazen. Did he feel he had nothing to lose? Or had it become a sick kind of a sport: he was challenging me to join the dots and uncover him as the clever killer he thought he was? Whether Phil was getting cocky, or losing control, either way it made for one hell of a deadly man.

  Involuntarily my body took a sharp intake of breath. There were others who could get caught up in the crossfire, who could be in immediate danger.

  Maggie was home this morning.

  Shit.

  65

  ‘Come on, come on, pick up, Maggie.’ I paced up and down as time warped and elongated the spaces between the rings. Finally, she picked up. I had to play this calm, for everyone’s sake.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Maggs, it’s, me. Don’t say my name. Are you home? Is Uncle Phil there with you? Just say yes if he is.’

  ‘No, I’m not at home, I’m down at uni.’ Relief flooded through my body and I flopped back into my chair. ‘What’s this about? What’s going on Sam?’

  ‘I can’t explain why right now, but I’ve got this awful feeling that your Uncle Phil is our killer. Too many things point that way, seem to add up. And you know that car guy, the stalker guy I told you about last night? I told Phil yesterday too, and he turned up dead this morning.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘I know it sounds far-fetched, and you’ll tell me I’m mad but—’

  ‘No, not that, yes, I mean that too but, I mean fuck, Sam. Your mother was still at home when I left.’

  I sat upright, hand clutching at the edge of my desk. I felt a pounding in my temples and a slight greyness smouldered at the periphery of my vision.

  ‘Are you sure? She was supposed to be at the hospital. She shouldn’t be there still. What would keep her there? Was Jude home too?’ I was babbling.

  ‘No, just your mum.’

  ‘Shit, shit, shit. Okay, I’ve got to go, got to sort this. For God’s sake, don’t go home until I ring you again.’ I hung up before she had a chance to reply and then dialled the number for the hospital. Maybe Mum had left after Maggie; I had to check. After what felt like a thousand transfers around half the departments in the building, I finally got through to Dad’s ward and was gutted to be informed that no, Mum wasn’t there.

  Fuck.

  I had to warn her.

  I took a large breath, steadied myself, and dialled the number for home. After three rings someone picked up.

  ‘Hello?’ It was Phil.

  Surely he’d hear the hammering of my heart in my chest. I tried to sound casual, but the quaver in my voice felt patently obvious.

  ‘Hi Phil, it’s Sam. Hey, is my mum about?’

  There was a pause. ‘Are you okay? You sound a bit shaky. Are you having problems with that guy again?’ he asked. He sounded so genuine, so concerned.

  ‘No, nothing like that. Had a run-in with the boss, that’s all.’ The moment the lie came out of my mouth, I found myself wondering if Phil would take care of that problem too. ‘I need to check out Mum’s timetable for the day. Is she there?’

  ‘I think so. I’ll see if I can find her.’

  I had a few moments to get my head around this. If I told Mum about Uncle Phil, she was just as likely to turn around and have him on about it. How could I get her out of the house without her arguing the point?

  ‘Sam? Is that you?’ I never thought I’d be so pleased to hear that voice.

  ‘Hi Mum. Hey, look, one of the doctors at the hospital rang me, trying to get hold of you. They’ve got some specialist who wants to have a chat to you and Dad, but he’s only available for another thirty minutes max, so they were wanting you to get down to the hospital straight away.’

  ‘Oh? Which one was that? I thought we’d seen the specialist?’

  She had to question it.

  ‘She didn’t give the exact details, only that if you wanted a chance to see him before you left for home, you’d have to get down straight away.’

  ‘Why didn’t they ring me here? They’ve got this as my contact number.’ If ever there was a time I wished she’d just shut the fuck up and do as she was told, this was it. It was all I could do not to scream at her down the phone.

  ‘I don’t know, Ma. Maybe they dialled the wrong number. It happens.’

  ‘You sound a bit shaky. Is everything alright?’

  She chose now to show a smidgeon of concern?

  ‘I’m fine. Work hassles. Look, you’d better hurry. This sounded like a good opportunity for some information.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Can you ring me on my cellphone as soon as you get there? And I’ll try and get along for the specialist too.’

  ‘Why would you want to be there, Sam? You haven’t shown that much interest in your father’s medical situation up until now?’

  Jesus Christ, Mother.

  ‘Mum, please.’

  ‘Okay, fine. I’ll call you. Bye.’

  The click echoed through my head, and I sat a moment, paralysed by indecision. Could I trust that she’d get out straight away? Could I trust that he hadn’t listened in to our conversation and wasn’t convinced by my less-than-stellar performance? It was a big fat negative to both. Should I go home? Make sure Mum was okay and get her the hell out of there? Last time I did something alone like that I got into serious trouble. Team player, Sam, you’re a team player now. But what if I was wrong about all this? What if I brought down the full might of the police force upon Uncle Phil and I was wrong? They’d fry me, for sure. But one image replayed in my mind. My mother with a psychopathic killer.

  I galvanised into action and sprinted down the hallway to DI Johns’ office. Shit, empty. Of course he wasn’t there. Where was everyone when you needed them? I grabbed his office phone and hit the Watch House hot key.

  Busy signal.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Okay, okay, who next? Duty CIB squad? I looked at the roster on the wall and dialled the number. Straight to voicemail. Bloody hell. Had the whole police force left town for the day?

  In case of dire emergency. This categorised as an emergency in my book. Desperation overrode any thoughts of sounding stupid. I rang 111.

  ‘111 Emergency, what service do you require?’

  ‘Police.’

  ‘One moment, please.’ One agonising moment.

  ‘Police, how can I help?’

  ‘This is DC Samantha Shephard, Dunedin CIB. I require an Armed Offenders squad call-out to number three-forty Highgate. The suspect is Phillip Kershaw, male, fifty-four, one hundred and eighty centimetres tall, short greying brown hair, clean shaven, ah, blue eyes, wearing…’ God, what was he in this morning? ‘Black trousers, striped shirt and a brown moleskin jacket. He is a murder suspect in Operation Sparrow. There could possibly be an adult female in the house with him, a potential victim.’ It killed me to say those words. ‘I can’t confirm her s
tatus as yet.’

  ‘Stand by, DC Shephard.’

  I held my cellphone in the other hand, willing it to chirp. I would never whinge about the noises those things made again.

  ‘Dunedin AOS is already in operation on another call-out. I have no estimate of when they’ll be done. I can put a call out to all available officers. Is the suspect known to be armed?’

  My mind flicked to the contents of his den. There was a safe. He’d used a hunting rifle in the past. All things considered, I would place bets on him having a side arm of some kind. He’d been pretty organised so far. ‘I can’t confirm that, but consider him armed and dangerous. He’s already killed five people.’

  ‘Ah, checking status now. It looks like all units are tied up in the AOS call-out in Mosgiel, and the murder in Kaikorai Valley. It’s been a busy morning. I’ll get whoever I can who’s available and armed.’

  Fuck, where was the bloody cavalry when you needed them? I made a snap decision. Actually, circumstance made it for me.

  ‘I’m going armed to the scene now. Please advise I am non-uniform, Caucasian female, one hundred and fifty-three centimetres, blonde tied-back hair, black trousers, white shirt, black jacket. And, please advise,’ my voice cracked, ‘the potential hostage is my mother.’