Certain Death

  “Maybe. How else do people get hold of large sums of cash?”

  “Robbery,” offered Graham. “Extortion. Fraud. Embezzlement. Blackmail.”

  “Blackmail!” I seized on the word. “That’s it!” Everything fell into place. “When Irena got shot, all the performers were there – they said so themselves.”

  “They also said they were watching the act,” Graham reminded me.

  “One of them must have been lying. Someone was taking aim. The police say it was Peepo. Suppose it wasn’t? But suppose he saw the person who did?”

  “Then why didn’t he tell the police? Surely he’d have wanted them to arrest the person who attempted to murder his wife?”

  I thought back to the chaos that had followed Irena’s shooting. “I watched him. He almost said something to her and then he didn’t. And he had this funny look on his face. Maybe he was going to tell her who’d done it. Then he realized he could make some money out of it. Money that he could use to win her back.”

  “It certainly sounds like a plausible theory,” Graham murmured.

  “I reckon Peepo didn’t kill himself at all. He was murdered.”

  “If that’s the case, it puts us right back at square one,” said Graham. “Without a clue what’s going on.”

  evasive tactics

  It was half-term, and usually Mum would have been quite happy for me to hang around at home doing Not Very Much while she was out digging people’s vegetable patches and mowing their lawns. But that particular Monday morning she declared she’d had enough of me and Graham poking our noses into mishaps and murders.

  “It’s dangerous,” she said firmly. “You’re all I’ve got. I’m not letting you put yourself in harm’s way again. You can come and help me today. I want you where I can see you.”

  Fortunately Graham and I had anticipated parental objections to us returning to the circus. In our whispered conversation the night before we’d devised a Plan of Action.

  I waited until I was showered and dressed and had eaten breakfast. Mum and I were just heading for the door when I announced: “Not feeling very well.” Clapping a hand over my mouth, I sprinted for the bathroom.

  Nothing convinces a parent you’re ill quite so well as a violent bout of vomiting. It’s not like you have to stick your finger down your throat or anything disgusting like that. A half-chewed piece of toast and a spoonful of coleslaw chucked down the toilet at the right moment does the trick – especially if accompanied by convincing noises. If you have the foresight to apply a hot flannel to your forehead at the same time, it’s doubly effective.

  Mum was now running late and her first client of the morning was particularly fussy about time-keeping. A glance at the fake vomit as I staggered from the bathroom was enough to persuade her to let me stay at home. In bed. All day. With only Mrs Biggs – our Not Very Observant next-door neighbour – to keep an eye on me.

  “I’ll ask her to look in later to see how you are,” Mum said fretfully. “I’m afraid I’ve got to go.”

  I knew from previous experience that Mrs Biggs would be far too busy watching daytime TV to do any such thing, but I wasn’t going to tell Mum that.

  “Call me if you get worse,” she said anxiously, and with one last worried glance she was gone. As the front door clicked behind her I rang Graham and said triumphantly, “Mission accomplished.”

  We met in the play area but found the swings already occupied by a gang of tough-looking toddlers. So instead we sat on the bank, the grass seeping damp through our jeans as we talked.

  “Let’s get it straight,” I said. “Carlotta could have fired the first shot, but she couldn’t have killed Peepo because she was in police custody at the time. So if the two things are related, she’s definitely off the hook.”

  “If our supposition is correct and the first crime precipitated the second,” said Graham, “then the other performers must be innocent too. They were all in the big top when Peepo died.”

  “The only one who wasn’t was Yuri,” I considered. “Which is kind of odd, seeing as he was due to go on right after Irena. But he doesn’t seem to have any motive.”

  “I read somewhere that, statistically speaking, the person who ‘discovers’ a corpse is very often the one who committed the crime,” offered Graham.

  “Right, so we keep Yuri on the list. I mean, the pistols were his – I suppose that alone ought to make him a suspect.”

  We both sat and thought for a while.

  “Of course we don’t know they were all in the big top,” I said. “We’re just assuming they were because that’s what happened when we watched the show. But we couldn’t exactly see a lot when we were under that caravan, could we? Anyone might have dashed across the grass without us noticing.”

  “True.”

  Another idea occurred to me. “Or someone might already have been hiding in there, waiting for Peepo. They could have escaped through the back window before Yuri opened the door.”

  “That would have been extremely difficult,” said Graham. “Those windows are tiny.”

  “But we’ve seen how bendy acrobats are. One of the Bouncing Bellinis could have done it, no problem. Or Zippo – he’s pretty supple. I don’t think Whizzbang would have managed it – he’s too old and creaky. And the Dashing Blade is way too big to have fitted through the gap.”

  Another long silence followed. “I suppose what we ought to consider,” said Graham finally, “is who might have had sufficient funds to pay Peepo. You wouldn’t think any of the performers would have enough cash to buy off a blackmailer.”

  “One more reason for killing him, then,” I suggested, my eyes roaming around the site and coming to rest on Brady Sparkles’s caravan. I pointed to it. “He owns the circus. It stands to reason he’d have more money than the others.”

  “Granted,” said Graham. “But his caravan looks as run down as the rest of them. In fact, from the outside they look uniformly shabby.”

  “From the outside,” I echoed thoughtfully. “But what about the inside?”

  Graham looked as if he might actually be as sick as we’d both pretended to be that morning. “Don’t say it,” he groaned. “Please…”

  But I couldn’t stop myself. “We have no choice,” I said. “We’re going to have to do a little breaking and entering.”

  monday matinee

  There was no point whatsoever in going to the police. As far as Inspector Humphries was concerned the case was solved. If we suggested anything else, he’d be irritated at best – and at worst, he’d tell our mums and then we’d be in real trouble.

  But we both knew that if the person who’d tried to kill Irena had also killed Peepo, it meant Irena was still in danger. And so would we be if we got caught.

  The only safe time to take a peek inside the caravans would be at the start of the matinee performance. We knew that when the audience flocked in, every single member of the circus would be working hard to persuade them to part with their cash.

  We would have about fifteen minutes.

  The matinee was due to start at 2 p.m. At 1.40 p.m. the first members of the audience began to arrive and the well-oiled circus machine swung into action. Graham and I crept into the shrubbery.

  “What are we looking for?” asked Graham, rolling up his sleeves courageously but looking green with nerves.

  “I don’t know,” I said vaguely. “Something. Anything. A lead. Some indication of who’s got it in for Irena.”

  Our search started easily enough. No one in the circus bothered to lock their doors, which seemed to suggest that either a) they were very trusting, or b) they had nothing worth stealing.

  Francesca and Marco shared the first caravan with their son, Paolo, and it was disappointingly normal. The beds had been transformed into sofas for the day. Everything was compact and clean, and the only thing out of place was a teddy bear that had been thrown under the table, possibly as a result of a toddler tantrum. It looked like a photograph from a holiday brochure ?
?? you know the kind of thing: “Our caravans are fully equipped with every comfort and convenience.” There was nothing to suggest the occupants were harbouring evil thoughts, but then what was I expecting? A to-do list with “Murder Irena” scrawled at the top?

  We tried the next one, which was obviously occupied by the remaining Bellini brothers. There were empty beer cans in the bin and the place smelt faintly of socks and cigarettes. The beds hadn’t been tidied away and it looked as though the occupants had only woken minutes before the audience arrived. Messy, but not murderous, was my verdict.

  Carlotta’s, next door, was practically a shrine to Alonzo. On every wall and every available surface there were photographs of him in different-coloured leotards. The extent of her devotion was obvious, as was the extent of her unhappiness. Crumpled tissues spilled out of the bin. Her pillow had a damp, dark circle in the middle as if it had been soaked with tears and mascara. A kind of weary despair hung in the air.

  “She must have cried non-stop since the police released her,” I whispered. “How will she be able to twirl her hula hoops if she feels this bad?”

  “Do you think she still wants to kill Irena?” murmured Graham.

  “No,” I said. Because for some reason I felt pretty sure that Carlotta was now miserable rather than murderous.

  Whizzbang, on the other hand, looked as though he might be capable of anything. His door was booby-trapped, so when I pushed at it a three-metre furry pink snake shot out and almost knocked me off my feet. Fortunately the music from the big top was so loud that no one heard my scream of alarm.

  “Spring-loaded,” said Graham, gathering it up and stuffing it back in its box. “Must be his idea of a joke.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  Feeling somewhat shaken, we continued our investigation. The home of Zippo the roller-skating juggler revealed nothing more than a fondness for cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, while the Dashing Blade hadn’t left any visible imprint of his personality on the caravan he shared with Ruby.

  We didn’t bother with Irena’s – time was running out, and in any case we didn’t think we’d find any clues there. We avoided Peepo’s, too – it was still cordoned off with tape.

  Yuri’s was next. On the table, a matchstick model of an enormously elaborate church was under construction. Tiny carved gargoyles edged the roof. The arched windows had been meticulously glazed with fragments of sweet wrappers, to mimic stained glass. Yet despite the evidence of this messy hobby, his home was fantastically clean. Small craft knives were neatly laid out, lined up precisely next to tubes of glue and strips of sandpaper.

  “Shipshape and Bristol fashion,” said Graham approvingly.

  Standing on a nearby shelf was a photograph of Yuri in some sort of uniform. I picked it up to show Graham.

  “Aha!” he said. “That must be where he learnt to shoot. He was a soldier. That would explain the degree of orderliness, too.”

  A name – presumably that of the photographic studio – was printed on the back. ANDRIJA ZORAN, STOLIJNA. More interesting was a tightly folded scrap of paper tucked into the corner of the frame. On impulse I pulled it out and stuffed it into my pocket to read later.

  By my reckoning we had about two minutes left. We entered Brady Sparkles’s caravan and it was the biggest surprise of the lot. Outside: a shabby, slightly dented touring home. Inside: an Aladdin’s cave of opulence and wealth. Plush velvet curtains hung at the windows. Silk throws covered the sofas. An ornate lace cloth was draped over a table that was covered with letters and papers, most of which seemed to be legal stuff to do with Irena’s contract.

  “He seems to be able to afford lots of lawyers,” I said. “He’d be worth blackmailing, wouldn’t he?”

  “If appearances are anything to go by, yes,” replied Graham.

  Elaborate frames held photographs of Brady’s favourite performers. The largest was of Irena. Irena on her own, without Alonzo or Misha.

  Her face formed the centrepiece to the whole display and was lit with its own spotlight. She must have been the last thing Brady Sparkles saw before he closed his eyes at night; the first thing he saw when he woke up in the morning.

  Was his interest in her purely professional? Or was he as besotted as Peepo had been? As Alonzo was? Did he want to kill her as much as Carlotta had?

  Graham and I looked at the photo and then at each other, eyebrows raised in mutual enquiry. But before we had time to say anything, we heard the tread of feet on the boardwalk outside. We dived beneath the draped table in the nick of time. The door creaked open.

  We were trapped in Brady Sparkles’s caravan with a potentially murderous ringmaster.

  the plot thickens

  The thirty stomach-churningly terrifying seconds that Brady Sparkles was storming around his caravan were filled with more swear-words than I’d heard in my entire life. He threw cupboards open and yanked clothes out of drawers, flinging everything on the sofa bed. If it hadn’t been his home, you’d have assumed he was a burglar.

  “Where is it, where is it, where is it?” he demanded.

  Of course Graham and I had no idea what he was looking for, but we both desperately hoped that he’d find whatever it was before he looked under the table. If he caught us in his current mood, he’d probably tear us limb from limb.

  It was then that I spotted a hat snuggling up to Graham’s left foot as if it was asking to be adopted. His top hat! The show couldn’t start without it! While the ringmaster ransacked his wardrobe, I nudged Graham, pointed at the hat and mouthed, “He’s looking for that.”

  Brady Sparkles had his back to us. Graham lifted the tablecloth a little and eased the hat underneath, giving it a gentle shove. The hat rolled across the floor of the caravan towards its rightful owner. But we must have been on a slight slope, because then it rolled back to Graham like a faithful hound returning to its master. Graham pushed it away again, and once more it came back. The third time he gave it such a hard knock that he sent it spinning into the middle of the floor. When the ringmaster stepped back from the wardrobe, he trod on it, crushing the silk hat beneath his foot like a beetle.

  When he realized what he’d done, a further stream of foul language flowed as he tried to repair the damage. Cramming the now-lopsided article onto his head, he turned to the photograph of Irena.

  He doffed his hat to her. And then he spoke words that chilled me to the bone.

  “This isn’t over yet, my lovely, despite what you think. I’ll see you in your grave before I let you leave me.”

  He left the caravan as swiftly as he’d arrived.

  For a few moments Graham and I didn’t even sigh with relief. We were both quivering like a pair of particularly unhappy jellyfish. Eventually I managed to say, “Let’s get out of here.”

  Graham couldn’t manage an answer, but he followed as I crawled shakily from underneath the table, and together we slipped out of the door.

  “I don’t think we should do that again,” said Graham when we were sitting safely on a bench in the park half an hour later, fortifying ourselves with cups of hot, sweet tea from the nearest cafe.

  “OK,” I agreed. “That was a bit too much of a close shave, wasn’t it?”

  “A brush with Certain Death, I’d have said.” Graham sipped his tea, and bit by bit some colour came back into his cheeks.

  I was pretty shaken up too, but my mind was still running on what we’d seen and heard. “Do you reckon Brady Sparkles is our man?”

  It was a while before Graham answered. “I can’t be sure either way,” he said at last.

  “I know what you mean,” I replied. “He certainly seems to be angry. Irena’s his star – I can understand why he’d try to stop her leaving. But it wouldn’t make sense for him to kill her, would it?”

  “Sense and logic rarely figure in the mind of a murderer,” said Graham. “However, I agree that it seems implausible. It would be a totally counter-productive move.”

  “And what about Peepo? Brady couldn’t hav
e killed him, could he? He must have been in the ring at the time Peepo died.”

  “No, the ringmaster couldn’t have shot the clown. Although he could, of course, have persuaded someone else to do it for him. As we observed, Brady Sparkles is the only member of the circus worth blackmailing. And if he could pay a blackmailer, perhaps he could also pay an assassin.”

  “Peepo… Misha…” My mind suddenly swung onto a completely different tack. “Do you reckon Peepo really was Russian?”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Graham. His firmness surprised me.

  “Why?”

  “We heard him swear when he dropped the necklace, and he certainly wasn’t speaking English. In times of crisis the mind instinctively reverts to its native language.”

  “Native language,” I echoed. “It’s odd that his note to Irena was written in English, then, isn’t it?”

  “That’s true. You’d have thought a private letter to her would have been written in their common tongue. Russian uses a different alphabet – I believe it’s called Cyrillic script.”

  “So we could have been right about her. She might be from Bognor Regis or Wokingham or somewhere. She sounds foreign, though, doesn’t she? And speaking of accents, what about Yuri?” I had the feeling again that I’d heard an accent like his somewhere before, but I still couldn’t pin down when. “He sounds Polish or something. Do you reckon it’s genuine?”

  “I would assume so. That photograph of him must have been taken in another country – that wasn’t an English army uniform.”

  The photograph! It was only then that I remembered the piece of paper I’d pulled from the frame. Taking it from my pocket, I unfolded it carefully.

  My jaw practically hit the park bench and I felt hot and cold all over. I recognized that handwriting!

  It was Peepo’s.

  an excellent shot

  Graham and I stared at the torn piece of paper in my hand. The words made my stomach flip right over.