Certain Death, Page 2

  Francesca smiled. “Who knows?” she said brightly. “Maybe their wonderful new act will be a flop. We’ve only got Irena’s word for it that they’re any good.”

  “That’s true.” Then Marco added something that made me shiver with apprehension. Leaning towards Francesca he said in a low voice, “One way or another, by this time tomorrow it will all be over.”

  box office

  By the time we’d finished our first ever juggling workshop, four of us had mastered the basic three-ball technique. Three others, including Graham, had progressed to throwing two balls, chucking one up in the air with the right hand, waiting until it peaked and then, with the left hand, throwing the other one up and under the first. I, meanwhile, was stuck with a single ball, trying and failing to throw it in a perfect arc while secretly observing the circus people’s goings-on. When our hour was up Peepo dismissed us, barely concealing his irritation at my apparent uselessness.

  “He doesn’t seem to like kids much, does he?” I said to Graham when we left Circus Territory.

  “No, he doesn’t,” agreed Graham thoughtfully. “And I wouldn’t have said he displays much passion for teaching.”

  “I wonder why he’s running the workshops, then?”

  It was a question that neither of us could answer.

  The following morning I got up bright and early. Graham and I had arranged to meet at the park gates so we could buy tickets for the afternoon performance before our second juggling lesson began at 11 a.m.

  By the time I arrived, a queue had already begun to build up at the box office. The prospect of Irena’s fatal accident in her debut performance was obviously a crowd-puller.

  I grabbed Graham by the arm and practically dragged him across the park. “Why didn’t you get in line?” I demanded.

  “Because you said to meet at the gates,” he protested.

  We overtook one middle-aged lady, two toddlers on tricycles and a geriatric Labrador, skidding into the queue behind an old woman wearing a headscarf and neck brace.

  “I love the circus!” she told us in a husky, foreign-sounding voice. She then proceeded to ramble on about nothing in particular, but I didn’t hear more than one word in a hundred because I was too busy trying to catch a glimpse of Irena.

  The box office was actually a long, wooden trailer hitched to the back of a lorry. It had once been gaudily decorated in the old-fashioned circus style, but now the paint was chipped and peeling and there were bulbs missing from the illuminated sign. The shutters had been thrown up when it opened for business and wooden steps had been strategically placed in the grass so the punters could climb up and hand over their cash. There were two people serving behind the twin counters – Francesca, whose conversation I’d listened in on yesterday, and a wrinkly old man whose name, Yuri, was spelt out across his jacket in gold sequins. The lady in front of us bought her ticket from Francesca, but we went further along to where Yuri was serving.

  “Two children for the matinee, please,” I said, pushing cash over the counter. “Front row if possible. And can we have a programme, too?”

  Yuri didn’t bother to answer. He didn’t even look up but just ripped the tickets from the book in front of him. Or at least he tried to. It took him ages, because he was so ancient that his hands were shaking and he couldn’t quite get hold of the paper. Eventually he thrust them and the programme towards me with an offhand grunt.

  “He needs to work on his people skills as well,” I told Graham as we moved away.

  We still had half an hour before our juggling workshop, so we took ourselves off to the nearest shop and bought a Coke and a bag of crisps each to fend off imminent starvation. We carried our emergency rations to the park’s play area.

  Graham began to flip through the programme. “That doesn’t bode well for the quality of this afternoon’s performance,” he said gloomily, pointing at a photograph.

  I looked at it. Yuri – the man who’d just sold us our tickets – was glaring fiercely at the camera, a pistol in each hand. “Oh dear,” I said. “So Shaking Man is the sharpshooter. Better make sure we’re not sitting anywhere near his target.”

  Once we’d finished our snack, it was time to juggle. A whole load more kids had come along, what with it being a Saturday. Peepo pocketed everyone’s money and then said more or less the same as the day before.

  “Everyone can juggle,” he announced. Then his eyes fell on me and he added, “Well … nearly everyone. Some, of course, have no talent.”

  I bristled at that and was determined to prove him wrong. As soon as he handed me my ball I devoted all my attention to it, and after about ten minutes he grunted and let me progress to two. It was pretty much chaos all around, with balls flying and being dropped and rolling across the grass. There was a lot of laughing and giggling and everyone seemed happy, until a scream suddenly cut through the air and reduced us to silence.

  It was a scream of fury, not terror. We heard raised voices from inside one of the caravans, and a second later Irena came storming out, followed by Brady Sparkles.

  She was holding a piece of paper – a letter, I thought; something official. She strode across the grass.

  “Irena, stop!” ordered the ringmaster.

  To my surprise she did. She didn’t look like the sort of person who’d obey orders, but when she turned to face Brady I saw she wore an expression of withering contempt. Very slowly and very deliberately she held up the piece of paper and tore it in two. Letting both halves fall to the ground, she trod them into the grass beneath her rhinestone-studded pumps.

  “That is what I think of your contract,” she spat in a heavy Russian accent. “Talent cannot be dictated to by words on paper. Irena goes where she wishes. She is free as the wind. No one can command her!”

  She turned once more and walked away, head held high. For a moment she looked as graceful and delicate as a porcelain ballerina. Brady Sparkles was left standing with his mouth wide open, unable to think of a suitable reply. When he mounted the steps back into his caravan, he threw a glance in Irena’s direction – and it wasn’t a pleasant one. If I’d had to write a list of people who would be happy for Irena to suffer the fate promised by the posters, Brady Sparkles would have been right at the top.

  femme fatale

  When it was almost time for the performance to begin, Graham and I joined the throng of people pushing and shoving their way into the big top. It became quite stressful, because even though we’d already paid for our tickets and programme, every single performer seemed determined to sell us something extra before we sat down. Carlotta was pushing candyfloss; Francesca, glow sticks; Marco, helium balloons; Alonzo, popcorn. Brady Sparkles held a small Shetland pony by the scruff of the neck and offered rides around the ring to anyone who could afford the high price.

  “Five pounds for ten seconds?” Graham said incredulously. “Metre for metre that probably makes it nearly as expensive as a trip to the moon.”

  Graham and I refused everything and eventually ended up – slightly hot and bothered – in the front row right next to the old lady who’d been ahead of us in the queue.

  “I hope this is going to be good,” I said crossly as the lights dimmed.

  It wasn’t.

  First on was the Dashing Blade and his glamorous assistant, Ruby. He was extremely rotund – in fact he looked as if he’d actually stuffed a pillow into his trousers – and the lenses of his glasses were as worryingly thick as they’d looked in the photo. After a loud fanfare and a drum roll Ruby stood in front of a painted board, and according to Brady Sparkles’s commentary we had to admire her out-standing courage as she faced a hail of knives. But the Dashing Blade stood so close to his target that he didn’t so much hurl his weapons as push them in around her like drawing-pins.

  And that was just the beginning. Some of the acts, like Zippo, the roller-skating juggler, and Carlotta, with her multitudinous hula hoops, were frankly bizarre.

  “I don’t get it,” I whispered to Graham
as we watched the gyrating Carlotta add another hoop to the twenty already whizzing around her waist.

  “Don’t get what?”

  “Well, what happened? Did she just wake up one morning with a desperate desire to twirl dayglo rings around her middle?”

  “I suppose she must consider it preferable to a life of office work,” said Graham. “But I agree that it seems like an odd choice of career.”

  When Carlotta finished, we had to endure Whizzbang, an old and slightly creaky magician who displayed no sleight of hand whatsoever. He pulled flowers out of walking-sticks and rabbits out of hats, but each trick was pitifully easy to see through.

  The Bouncing Bellinis did a lot of impressively energetic acrobatics and finished their act by somersaulting off a springboard and landing on each other’s shoulders. They were actually quite good if you like that sort of thing. The people-pile was topped by the lovely Francesca, but they were all held up by the scarily hairy Alonzo.

  “Aha!” I said quietly to Graham. “That’s why Francesca and Marco don’t like Irena. Look how much their act depends on Alonzo. He’s holding the whole thing up. Literally.”

  “And if they suspect she might be about to take him away…”

  Graham didn’t finish his sentence, because our attention was distracted by Peepo bursting into the ring on a tiny trick bicycle. I thought Irena had been really cruel to him the day before and I had no idea what was behind it. But as his act went on I started to understand why she might feel the way she did.

  Peepo was one of those comedians who amuses the audience by dragging people up on stage and making fools of them. Everyone else is so glad they haven’t been picked on that they howl with hysterical laughter. Which is all very well unless you’re the victim suffering agonies of embarrassment in the spotlight.

  I don’t know if I just happened to be sitting in the wrong place or if Peepo chose me because I’d irritated him by being so bad at juggling. But within thirty seconds of him appearing in the ring, Peepo’s trick bicycle had “broken down”, dousing me with water and shaving foam. So he grabbed me by the hand and yanked me into the ring to “apologize”. First he presented me with a bunch of flowers. When I took them, they exploded. Ha, ha. Next he gave me chocolates and absolutely insisted I ate one. Soap! Hilarious. Then he awarded me with a toy dog, which “pooped” down my leg. Oh, how I laughed. By the time he let me go again, my sides were splitting. Not.

  “Let’s just go,” I said to Graham as soon as I got back to my seat. “That was horrible. I can’t stand any more.”

  “But it’s Irena next.”

  “I don’t care. I want to go home.”

  I was so hot and humiliated that I would have walked out, but then the music changed and Irena literally dazzled me into sitting down.

  She hadn’t been lying when she’d said she had talent. She was in a league of her own. By comparison, all the other acts were just a display of some rather weird tricks. Empty. Pointless. But there was something about Irena that grabbed at your heart the second she came on. She was irresistible: you just couldn’t take your eyes off her. Alonzo pulled a rope over from the side and held it steady while she climbed up to the trapeze. When she was perched safely, Alonzo followed her and Brady Sparkles pulled the rope aside and clipped it out of their way.

  Irena’s routine with Alonzo was an amazingly beautiful aerial ballet. It told a story – boy meets girl, girl plays hard to get, boy wins her over. It was like watching two really good dancers on TV doing a rumba or a tango, only this was fifteen metres above our heads. The whole thing was romantic – not in a sloppy, puke-making fashion but in a way that warmed your heart and lifted your spirits. As the music built up, Alonzo had Irena wrapped around his torso like a snake. Then he dropped backwards off the trapeze: first dangling by his knees, then his ankles, then his toes. Irena moved down Alonzo’s body, sliding further and further away from him as if she was trying to escape his clutches. He was holding her arm, her wrist, her hand and then finally just her fingers. Only her fingertips prevented her from thudding to her death.

  By now we were all on the edge of our seats. When they reached their jaw-dropping finale, the old woman sitting next to me was so entranced that she clutched my arm and gasped.

  Alonzo was holding Irena by the tip of one finger and she was looking deep into his eyes, when… Crack !

  A shot ripped the air apart. Irena gasped. Slipped out of Alonzo’s grip. Fell.

  Someone screamed. It might have been me. Graham leapt to his feet, arms outstretched, as though he might be able to catch her.

  He didn’t need to. In a split second Alonzo whipped one foot from the trapeze and lunged at Irena, catching her by the wrist. She didn’t seem to be bleeding, but the jerky movement sent them into a lurching spin. They were both suspended, held only by the toes of Alonzo’s right foot. One false move and they would both be dead.

  They hung in silence for several agonizing heartbeats. The audience were frozen in their seats: no one moved, no one breathed, no one made a sound. We were all gripped by Alonzo’s face. Terror showed clearly in his eyes: every muscle, every sinew, every nerve was strained, stretched to its very limit. Beyond it. Another second and he’d snap. They’d both fall. And there was nothing anyone could do to save them.

  Then Peepo ran into the ring. He’d had the presence of mind to unhook the end of the rope that Alonzo and Irena had climbed to reach the trapeze. He pulled it over to Irena and she took it with one hand, then curled a leg around it gratefully. Just in the nick of time. Alonzo’s toes gave out and he fell off the trapeze, still holding Irena’s wrist. As he dropped below her he snatched at the rope, but not before there was a hideous popping sound and Irena screamed. In falling, Alonzo had pulled her arm out of its socket.

  But then Alonzo was clinging to the rope below Irena and they were able finally to descend, with her riding on his shoulders as he lowered them both safely, hand over hand, to the ground. Once Alonzo’s feet touched the sawdust all hell broke loose. The Bouncing Bellinis ran, white-faced, to their aid. Carlotta threw herself at Alonzo’s waist and, when he didn’t respond, collapsed in a corner, weeping. Francesca seized a phone from a stunned member of the public and called for an ambulance. Peepo put his hand on Irena’s uninjured arm and looked as if he was about to speak. Yet even though he’d just saved her life, she looked right through him. His mouth snapped shut. A wave of sympathy crashed over me, but then I noticed a furtive, sneaky look flash across his face. He turned and left the ring.

  It was only then that I realized the woman sitting next to me was still clutching my arm.

  “It’s OK, she’s safe,” I said. “You can let go now.”

  Except she couldn’t.

  Whoever had fired the gun had missed Irena, but the bullet must have ricocheted off the trapeze, because it had hit the old woman right between the eyes.

  She was dead.

  the smoking gun

  I knew from experience that you shouldn’t move a dead body until the police have examined the crime scene. I just had to sit there, motionless, feeling the old lady’s hand getting colder and colder against my skin as I waited for them to arrive.

  The police and the ambulance turned up at the same time. Suddenly the big top was awash with blue flashing lights and sirens and everything got very confusing.

  After the emergency services had done what they needed to, the audience were allowed to troop out in single file, first giving their names and addresses to the uniformed PC on the exit in case they were required as witnesses later on. But Graham and I weren’t allowed to go anywhere until the policeman in charge, Inspector Humphries, had spoken to us. We’d met him before – he’d investigated a series of murders at the local theatre, where we’d been performing in The Wizard of Oz. He wasn’t exactly overjoyed to see us again, but even though he clearly wanted to get rid of us as fast as was humanly possible, he couldn’t do anything until Mum had arrived to be the Responsible Adult present at our interview
.

  As soon as the old lady had been carried away on a covered stretcher, the inspector took over the box office and began talking to the circus people. The shutters were down, so we couldn’t see inside. A uniformed PC guarded the side door, but there was no one minding the back. Graham and I squeezed between the crush barrier and the wooden wall, pressed our ears to the boards and began eavesdropping with all our might.

  Inspector Humphries started with Yuri. I noticed that the sharpshooter’s accent sounded faintly familiar but I couldn’t think why.

  “I gather that the murder weapon belonged to you?” said Inspector Humphries.

  “Yes,” replied Yuri.

  “You used it in your act?”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand that it was one of a pair,” continued the inspector. “Where is the second, Mr Mehic?”

  “I do not know. It seems to have been … removed.” He rolled the R so vigorously that Graham and I could almost feel it vibrating through the wall.

  “Removed?” echoed the policeman.

  “Yes, removed. Taken. Stolen.”

  “From where?”

  “My act was to begin after that of Irena. The pistols were laid out on the table behind the curtain.”

  “So any one of the performers would have had access to them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see anyone touch them?”

  “No. I was watching the act.”

  “Along with everyone else, apparently,” grumbled Inspector Humphries. “There you were, standing like one big happy family, completely absorbed in the show. The big top was packed to bursting. You’d think we’d have had hundreds of witnesses to what happened. But no one seems to have seen a thing. It’s remarkable.”

  “Not so remarkable, Inspector. Irena and Alonzo had not told anyone what was in their new act. They – how you say? – kept it close to the chest. It was the first time any of us had seen it. We did not know if it would be a success.”