by Will Harker
Someone who didn’t seem to appreciate the joke was Gerald Roebuck. Sprawled across the carpet, he blinked daggers at me from under tufted eyebrows. Harry squeezed past and helped the old boy to his feet. Meanwhile, I replaced his makeshift weapon in the vacant mount on the wall beside the door. The smell of cigarettes was almost overpowering, the wallpaper and ceiling coated yellow with nicotine. Even the historian’s white hair was dyed with tangerine-coloured streaks.
“What the hell was that all about?” he complained, flashing those long white fingers at me. “You scared me half to death.”
“Likewise,” I said. “Do you greet all your visitors with a javelin, Mr Roebuck?”
“Harpoon,” he muttered. “From an eighteenth-century whaling ship. Nearest thing to hand.”
“I stand corrected.”
He gave me a grudging shrug. “Bit OTT, no doubt. But it’s the third time this week the kids round here have broken that bit of glass. I thought it was one of them coming to leave something unpleasant on the doorstep.”
“So you planned to harpoon them?”
“Just frighten the little bastards, that’s all.” He looked to Harry for moral support. “You’re a librarian, you know what they can be like. Anyway.” A pair of beady eyes refocused on me. “Two o’clock was our arrangement, wasn’t it?” Pulling an enormous fob-watch from his waistcoat pocket, he tapped the glass. “It is now a quarter past twelve.”
I cast Harry a glance. I didn’t want to discuss this in front of him. “You got my message from last night?”
“Urgent, so you said.” I’m sure the smile behind his beard was the height of condescension. “All researchers believe their pet project is the most important thing in the world. I assure you, it isn’t. My time, however, is. So if you could return at the appointed hour? Thank you, thank you.”
Fingers with nails thick as orange rind ushered us out. I wanted to put him on his guard but with Haz beside me, it was next to impossible.
“Just, don’t let anyone in until I come back,” I said.
He didn’t appear to be listening. “By the way,” he called after us. “I have something for you, Jericho—a little surprise I found on the net after we talked last night. I think you’ll find it quite revelatory.”
With a final wave, he closed the door.
“What was that all about?” Harry asked.
“I’d say that was assault with a deadly weapon. He’s just lucky I’m not a police officer anymore.”
“And I’d call that evasion. Why did you need to see him so urgently? And why tell him not to open his door to strangers?” When I didn’t answer, Haz pulled us to a stop. “Scott, I’m serious. This case, you said it could be dangerous to a small number of people. Is Roebuck one of them? If you could just tell me, then I–”
I squeezed his hand. “I’ve said before, I don’t want you involved. If for nothing else then for my own sake. Whatever we have going on between us right now, it’s the only good thing in my life. The only pure thing.” It felt like a necessary correction. Because, much as I didn’t want to admit it, the case itself had changed my life for the better. “And it isn’t just this investigation,” I went on. “If we stay together, and if I continue doing this kind of work, I’d always want to keep it separate.”
“For the reasons you told me,” he said softly. “But I’m not a child, Scott. I’ve seen a lot of ugliness too. If you trust me, I might turn out to be stronger than you think.”
We went around in that same circle for twenty minutes or more, both of us, as it turned out, keeping our secrets. By the time we reached the heath, we were no further forward.
Fairgrounds come into their own at night. Unchallenged by the glare and competing distractions of the day, the noise, the lights, the spectacle draw in the punters more easily. Daylight hours are usually when repairs are done, the working innards of rides exposed, spectres from the ghost train laid out upon the grass and revealed as simple malfunctioning mannequins. But that wasn’t the case today. It was the opening of the memorial celebrations and, although the lights burned less brightly at noon, the heath was still teeming with punters.
Forgetting our conversation, Harry grinned like a little kid. And I couldn’t help it, seeing his excitement, I smiled too.
I’d been born a showman. Had spent the first eighteen years of my life among these sights, these people, but suddenly it was as if I was seeing it all afresh through his eyes. The sheer, giddy wonder that makes a travelling fair so special. Watching him zigzag from one stall and ride to another, laughing as he won a plush toy from the hook-a-duck, weaving drunkenly as he jumped down from the Waltzer carriage, I felt both pride and shame. In rejecting some of the things about my people that made me feel like I didn’t belong, I had rejected all of it—the joy, the love, the camaraderie. It was Harry who made me see all of that again.
At the dodgems, Big Sam Urnshaw swarmed out of his booth and came over to greet us. I introduced Harry and the old showman’s sharp eyes flicked between us. I’d heard Sam joke about ‘queers’ in the past, but not since I’d come back and I wondered if perhaps he hadn’t for a few years now. In any case, he slapped Harry on the back and guided him to ‘the fastest car I got’. After bouncing us around the plates for a few minutes, Harry then dragged me away to the Ferris wheel.
Layla Jofford stopped her ride when we reached the top and, glancing down, I saw her snap me a salute. Layla had been a friend of my mum’s and we’d always got on well.
“Don’t they pause it here so that couples can kiss?” Harry said.
I leaned in. “They do.”
After honouring this age-old tradition, we took in the view from our swaying gondola: the whole panorama of Bradbury End sitting in its bowl between the hills, the woods away to the north with the thread of the river. Somewhere beneath that green canopy stood Travellers Bridge and the ruined house where a boy and his mother had lived their strange lives. Somewhere inside the compass of this town, a killer waited.
My eyes tracked back to the trailers set out at the edge of the ground. There was something like twenty-five families living and working on my father’s fair. That added up to over two hundred individuals. Times that by the number of showpeople currently travelling around the UK and I was faced with a vast suspect pool. True, the story of the Jericho freaks was specific to my family’s fair, but such legends are considered common property and I couldn’t limit its reach to just our small corner of the community.
Back at ground level, Harry said he had a hankering for sugar so we set off towards the catering trucks. Giddy as ever, he ticked off on his fingers all the rides and attractions he still wanted to take in: helter-skelter, funhouse, and oh yes, he definitely wanted his palm read by one of the ancient aunts. We’d just ordered a couple of hot dogs when I heard my name being called. Webster in tow, Jodie came skipping towards us.
“Uncle Scott!” She threw her arms around my waist while Webster received a rapturous welcome from Haz. “I’ve missed you! Did Mum tell you I’ve been ’vestigating ever since you left? I’ve kept my eyes peeled, just like you said, and I’ve found loads of clues.” She stopped, breathless. “Who’s this?”
“Jodie, Harry. Harry, Jodie,” I said.
“Oh.” She jabbed an elbow into my hip. “Is this your boyfriend?”
Harry stood up from where he’d been scratching Webster’s belly. He held out his hand and, after a second’s hesitation, Jodie shook.
“I am indeed Uncle Scott’s boyfriend,” he confirmed. “And you must be his favourite niece.”
“Goddaughter,” Jodie corrected solemnly. “I like your floppy hair.”
I laughed. I’d once told Sal that her daughter had an open mind. All kids do, I think.
“Where’s your mum?” I asked.
She pointed over to the candyfloss stall where Sal was busy multitasking—one eye on the customers, one on her baby girl. She clocked Harry and twirled a pink-headed stick i
n our direction.
“The famous Sally Myers,” Haz murmured. “In the flesh.”
“Mum isn’t famous,” Jodie rolled her eyes.
“Why don’t you go and say hello,” I suggested. “Take Webster with you. Me and the munchkin have detective things to discuss.”
This clearly delighted Jodie and she handed over Webster’s lead.
“I’ll take good care of him,” Harry promised, and together they trotted off towards Sal’s stall.
“I like him,” Jodie said after a moment’s consideration. “He’s very pretty. Maybe a bit too pretty for you?” I clutched an invisible dagger to my heart and she giggled. “You’re a lot funnier now, Uncle Scott. And your eyes are a lot kinder too. A lot’s changed, I think.”
I knelt and booped her nose. “And I think you’re an amazing detective.”
“That’s nothing!” she said, dragging a notebook from the back pocket of her dungarees. “I’ve got, like, a million clues here.”
And so we sat cross-legged together on the grass, smiling punters cutting around us. No one seemed to mind, the goodwill of the fair working its magic again. Jodie talked me through her clues—a discarded cigarette found by the teacup ride (very suspicious); the woman who’d bought six candyfloss bags from her mum but had come to the fair alone (ultra suspicious/possibly just greedy); the stranger who’d taken Webster and hadn’t brought him back.
“Did you see this man?” I asked carefully.
She nodded. “It was a couple of nights ago. Mum thought I was asleep but I wasn’t sleepy at all. I saw him through my window and the next morning everyone thought you’d taken Webster and wouldn’t believe me when I said it wasn’t you. You’re big and tall and this man was sort of skinny-looking. But do you want to know the really funny thing?”
“Tell me.”
Jodie gave me her most serious detective look. “It’ll sound weird, but it’s true, I promise.”
“I’ll believe you,” I assured her.
“Well, the thing is…” She twisted her fingers together. “That man that took Webster? When I looked at him, his face wasn’t right.”
“What do you mean, sweetheart?”
She stared at me. “It wasn’t there, Uncle Scott. His face was all gone.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
HE DIDN’T HAVE A FACE. After Miss Debney and Alessandro Martinez, Jodie was my third witness. She had seen the killer, masked in his balaclava but not wearing his glowing vestments. When I questioned her, she claimed he’d been dressed entirely in black, like a figure cut out of the night. He’d emerged from behind my dad’s trailer with Webster on his lead, and dog and man had soon vanished again into the dark. A few hours later, the juk would be dropped outside Harry’s bungalow, a piece of Adya Mahal’s flesh attached to his collar.
According to Jodie, the murderer moved through the ground with easy familiarity. Hearing this, my heart plummeted. It seemed to confirm what the victim connection had suggested—all this mad butchery was the work of a showman. A showman who most likely belonged to the Jericho travelling fair.
Something Garris had said came back to me then, “Remember your Sherlock Holmes.” What was that famous line of Conan Doyle’s? When Holmes was asked by an inspector if there was anything to which he wished to draw to the officer’s attention, he had replied, “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Like the dog in that story, Webster had not barked, meaning he must know the killer. Was that what Garris had been implying? That Webster, who had taken a while to warm up to Harry and who barked at practically everyone, had known his abductor?
“Did I do a good detective job?” Jodie asked, drawing me out of my thoughts.
“You’re the greatest detective that ever lived,” I told her and rewarded her with tickles.
When she was done giggling, she asked, “So do you need help standing up now? Because you’re old?”
I said I did and she used both hands to haul me upright. Snaking our way through the crowd, we joined a pink-lipped Harry at Jodie’s stall. He dabbed my nose with his candy floss and I tried my best to keep the tension out of my voice.
“I see someone’s been having fun.”
“And not just because of the sugar,” he grinned. “Sal and I have been talking.”
I glanced over at the munchkin’s mother. She was leaning against the side of her stall, a coke in hand, taking a well-earned break.
“I am not liking the sound of this,” I said.
Sal cocked an eyebrow. “Never let the boyfriend and the best friend swap notes. All kinds of embarrassing secrets might come spilling out. Like that time two slightly high sixteen-year-olds videoed themselves recreating Dolly and Kenny’s iconic Islands in the Stream. Don’t look so bashful, Scott, you made a very passable Dolly.”
“And you had the beard for a quite convincing Kenny Rogers,” I quipped back.
She bowed. “It was always my honour to be your beard.”
Harry burst out laughing and, although she had no idea what we were talking about, Jodie joined in.
“I think I need to walk off some of this sugar,” he said. “Do you want to give me a tour of the rest of the fair, Jodie?”
Sal nodded and Jodie grabbed Harry’s hand, nattering away ten to the dozen as she pulled him back into the crowd. Meanwhile, Sal watched me from over the rim of her coke.
“What?” I said after a solid minute of silent observation.
She shrugged. “So that’s the boy who broke your heart, is it?”
“I don’t recall saying anything about a broken heart.” I bristled.
“That was just my brilliant guesswork at the time.” She tossed the empty can into a nearby bin, scattering a swarm of wasps. “So how did you two bump into each other again after all these years?”
“That’s a long story.” She narrowed her eyes. “For Christ’s sake, Sal, stop looking at me like that. Don’t you like him or something?”
“That’s the thing, I do like him. I liked him the first time you told me about him when you came back from Oxford that Christmas. And then, just a few months later, he pretty much destroyed your life, so forgive me if I’m a little suspicious.”
“That wasn’t his fault,” I told her. “He was dealing with some very dark shit back then.”
“But it isn’t just that,” she said as if she hadn’t heard me. “I also wonder what he’s doing here, right at the moment when you seem to be knee-deep in some very dark shit of your own. Oh, don’t look so stressed, I’m not going to restart that old argument. You’ve promised that this case or whatever it is won’t come back on us, and I guess I’ll just have to take your word for that.” I cut my gaze away. When I’d made that promise I hadn’t known about the connection between the victims. “It just all seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?”
Coincidences, I thought. They were almost the running theme of this case. But coincidences do happen, don’t they? Despite what old Travellers might think, not everything is some vast conspiracy. And yet that phone call I’d overheard, apparently between Haz and his colleague at the library, sparked again in my mind: I think he bought it in the end…
“Anyway,” Sal continued. “What were you going on about last night? I mean, it’s pretty obvious that this case of yours is connected to that old story of the Jericho freaks. I just can’t for the life of me imagine how.”
“Has anyone around here been asking about it?” I said. “Maybe one of the younger Travellers bothering the aunts with questions?”
“Scott…” she began.
“Please,” I said, “humour me.”
She glanced over at her stall where one of the chaps was making a mess of negotiating clouds of candyfloss onto their wooden sticks. “Christ’s sake, Martin, it’s not brain surgery. Twist and flick, you divvy gorger.” She turned back to me “It wasn’t a Traveller, as it happens. It was one of them. A chap. Your chap, in fact. The one you ditched and who’s been mooning a
round like a lovesick teenager ever since you left.”
“Zac?” I frowned.
“That’s the cherub. I honestly don’t know what they see in you, but he’s got it bad. He must have asked me a hundred times to get you to call him. Anyway, he came to me the day the handbills were printed for this here event. Said he was curious, wanted to know what the anniversary was all about. I told him the basic story.”
“Did he pursue it?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did he want to know specific details? Who died, where exactly it happened, that sort of thing?”
“I don’t think so. To be honest, I can’t really remember what I told him.”
I mulled it over. We’d picked up Zac in Hampstead a few months ago; a law student working the circuit for his summer job. Although, thinking about it, our chaps didn’t usually come from the halls of high academia. There had also been the suggestion of an unsettled home life, I remembered: a snapshot I’d glimpsed in his wallet with a family member torn out. If it wasn’t for the fact the dates didn’t work, Zac could be an ideal suspect for Jonathan Matthers. A boy who might have come to resent the father who’d died, leaving him alone with that overly protective mother. But Matthers would be at least two decades older than Zac.
Something in mine and Garris’ discussion of the killer niggled, however. How had Pete phrased it? “If our man fits the typical profile, he’s likely to be a loner without a family or normal home life, although he may give the illusion he has one.” Had Zac meant for me to see that snapshot, simply to foster the impression of an existing if dysfunctional family? Was he Garris’ loner? A fixated murderer who perhaps wanted to belong to the community he’d decided to avenge?
“Speak of the devil,” Sal said, nudging my arm.
I turned to find Zac jogging towards us.
“I better get back to the stall before Martin burns it down.” She prodded a forefinger into my chest. “You go easy with him.”