Send in the Clowns, a Detective Mike Bridger novel (2 page)

“
So, are you
a descendant of one of the original Circus members too?” Gillian
looked at Anthony and just caught the look he directed at the man
who had called himself Irish Mick. It was almost intimate but
contained an ounce of jealousy or it may even have been hatred; she
could not be sure of which.

“
That’s
right,” he said, not taking his eyes off Michael “Juan Gonzales was
my great grandfather, but he had a falling out with the Wilsons and
left the troupe.”

“
It’s all
ancient history now Ant, isn’t it. The police don’t want to hear
about all of that.”

“
I thought
people ran away too join the Circus, but it seems you are born into
it after all.” Steve Kirkland had butted in, sensing tension
between the two men. “You learn something new every
day...”

Gillian saw the smile on
her partners face, but could not tell whether he was joking or not.
“Perhaps we should get too why you called us…” She looked back at
Michael.

“
Maria
Staverly… the other half of Ant’s act, she fell tonight… she is up
at the hospital now.”

“
That’s awful
Mr Wilson; I hope she will be okay, but from what I have been told
already it sounds like an accident too me, so it’s not really a
Police issue. We would normally put this down to a workplace
accident and let the Health and Safety people deal with it.”
Gillian Holler was usually pretty patient with people, but as the
supervisor for her depleted staff of five on one of the busier
nights of the week, she had little patience for time wasters. “I
can give you a number to call if you like.”

“
See, I told
you Ant, it’s not a Police problem, now, can we let them get on
with their evening and get up to the hospital.”

Anthony ignored his
friend and looked directly at Gillian “Sergeant, the ropes we used
tonight to secure the swings, they were shorter than they should
have been, I checked them myself after Maria fell. There was no way
she could have made that jump if she wanted too. Someone did that
on purpose…”

Irish Mick mumbled
something under his breath, which Gillian did not catch, but the
look on Anthony’s face darkened.

She looked at her watch,
there were four more jobs waiting for attendance in the police
dispatch system, all of them had people wanting something from
them. This is all we bloody need. The thought was nothing new to
her; sometimes she wondered why she came in to work, just to put up
with other people’s problems. It was going to be a long
night.

Maria Staverly looked
down at the growing cast on her wrist, the Nurse was expertly
adding layer upon layer of what she had called a ‘knitted
fibreglass bandage’, impregnated with polyurethane. She did not
really care what the Nurse had called it though, it meant nothing
too her; she did not even mind the pain in her wrist. All she saw
was the next six weeks where she would not be able to perform. She
had to perform. It was all she had. She was part of the greatest
show on earth…, if you believed the hype. They still had eight
nights left on the card in Dunedin, and then it was back up north
too Auckland. She loved Auckland, the crowds were bigger, the
nightlife even more so.

At twenty-six she was
still in excellent shape, her figure was as good as when she was
twenty, something of which she was proud. Her strength and fitness
was better than it had ever been. It was that, which had saved her
this evening, she was sure of it. She had walked away with a slight
concussion and a broken wrist; a weaker person would have broken
more, but she was strong. The physical trauma did not bother her;
but the memory of the fall was vivid in her thoughts. It was
uncontrollable, but at the same time, it was avoidable. It was
something that Ant had drilled into her, ‘Always check your
equipment’. She had dropped the ball tonight and that did bother
her. She was getting a bit lazy, Ant always checked, she trusted
him, she had fallen, and that scared her.

When she had woken, she
was face down in the sawdust and had struggled to turn herself
over; she had felt the pain in her wrist immediately. The lack of
air in her lungs had made it hard to breath. Ant had been leaning
over her, fussing as he always did, pretending too care. Bloody
Mick was more worried about his audience than about her, she had
seen the last of them drifting out of the tents front entrance as
she lay there and he had been hovering around them like an angry
blowfly. Then those bloody Clowns, she had seen them on the other
side of the ring, gathered around their pathetic little car,
laughing and joking as if nothing had happened. She had lain on the
sawdust-covered surface for fifteen minutes before the ambulance
had arrived, looking at the unfamiliar view, realising just how
high the swings actually were from the ground. The Clowns did not
come over once…

“
That’s you
all done then… how are you feeling?” The Nurse had a slight
Scottish accent.

Maria looked back at the
nurse blankly. The question had thrown her, how was she feeling…?
She had no idea.

“
The Doctor
has cleared you to go home once I have finished putting this cast
on. Is there someone to pick you up?”

The thought hit her
without warning, along with a wave of loneliness; there was no one
here to pick her up. “The same old shit,” she mumbled under her
breath. It never changes.

“
Sorry? I
missed that” the Scottish Nurse looked slightly confused. Maria did
not bother to reply; instead, she looked down at her cast and then
tried for a smile. The Nurse took this as something and stood up
brushing her skirt down over her thighs.

“
Well, you
were a lucky girl tonight; it’s not a very safe line of work you
are in… I always thought it looked quite glamorous you know, but
now I’m not so sure.” The Nurse smiled thinly when Maria did not
reply and shrugged her shoulders. “Make sure you sign out with the
Nurse on the front desk before you leave.”

Maria watched the Nurse’s
overly efficient backside as it practically waddled out of the
treatment room and disappeared down the corridor. You need to get
some exercise you fat cow; the unfair thought came too her as
naturally as air. She knew she did not feel compassion for other
people the way she should, but her life did not lend itself to
feelings of such a nature. She lived in close confinement with
forty other people on a daily basis but did not really feel a
connection too any one of them; it had been that way for most of
her life. Reaching into her tiny skirt, covering the spandex
leggings and top she was still wearing, she retrieved a little blue
pill from inside the waistband and popped it into her mouth. He
smiled too herself, better than painkillers, she knew she would be
flying and feeling no pain in a short while.

She sat in the now empty
treatment room. She was alone; no one had come for her. Ant or Mick
should have been here, they owed her that. Then they probably had
one too many whiskies, as usual, and would be holed up in his
trailer doing god knows what, and pissed as farts in the process.
They thought they had kept it a great big secret, but she
knew.

Breathing in the sickly
sweet air laced with disinfectant and germs, she stood up;
stretching her back, she felt her spine click into place, easing
the tension in her neck. With a quick glance around the room, she
saw nothing worth taking, but pocketed a couple of bandage rolls,
just out of habit. Walking out into the corridor, she bypassed the
front desk and stepped out through the front door and into the
night. The cooler air felt good in her lungs after the stuffiness
of the hospital. The magic was starting to move around her body and
she felt tingles run up her spine. She did not want to go home, not
just yet.

She knew from past visits
to the city, if she could call it a city, that it thrived off the
student population. She also knew that they seemed too congregate
around the north end of town. That is where she would go; she would
try to salvage something from her evening, such that it was. It did
not even matter how she was dressed, that would work in her favour,
something she had learned from experience. A small smile played out
on her lips as she recalled the memories and then the pill started
to take effect.

Crossing over Great King
Street, she walked over towards the old Hercus Building. There was
an alleyway somewhere here, more of a driveway than an alleyway,
which led around to the rear. Someone had told her once on a
previous visit that it was where the old mortuary had been. The
dead travelled through here in all of the states that death had
found them. Obsessed over by pathologists, the empty shells would
have been stripped of its secrets and then returned to the
grieving. The bodies would have left, but the spirits would always
remain. Not a place a young woman should be walking at night,
sharing space with hundreds of lost souls.

She did not care, old
ghost stories were just that, silly stories… nothing too be afraid
of at all. This way was quickest; it led right up to the rear of
the Robbie Burns Hotel, with a bar she knew would be full of her
kind of people. She did not even look back as she stepped into the
darkness cast from the shadow of the building; and she did not
notice the equally dark figure that had fallen into step behind her
as she disappeared from the safety of the street. The little blue
pill had taken its hold and she did not know much of anything,
except anticipated pleasure…

Chapter
Three

Mike Bridger saw the glow
of the cellphone light up in the darkness before it even made a
noise. The vibration brought it closer to his outstretched fingers
and he was able to shut it off before Beethoven got into full
swing, the ninth symphony being his ringtone of choice, something
with which he could not quite put his finger on why he liked it.
The first stirring of anger started to raise the bile in his
throat; he could not be bothered with interruptions tonight. He
felt a little relief in that was not ‘on call’, and so whoever it
was could wait until morning. He had things that were more
important on his mind.

Not checking the caller
details, he put the phone down on the bedside table. To stop any
more unwanted interruptions he turned up the music playing on the
small speaker, which was streaming from an application on his iPod
– Dave Matthews Band – Grace is Gone, music that suited the
evening’s activities, mellow guitars and a melancholy
voice.

Turning back towards the
centre of the bed, he saw her shapely silhouette, lying on her
side, arms outstretched invitingly… “Now, where were we?” he heard
a small giggle and made a grab for the nearest lump he could
see.

The phone rang again,
just loud enough to make itself known over a lull in the music. The
clash of melody breaking the moment, he watched her shrink back
under the covers with a frustrated sigh.

“
Bloody cell
phones, you can’t get a moments peace.” Wishing he had turned it
off he grabbed the phone from the bedside table, stopped the music,
and sat up on the edge of the bed before pressing the answer key.
“Bridger.” Whoever it was had better have a bloody good
explanation. There was a slight pause on the other end of the
phone. “Well…?” He grew impatient.

“
Detective
Sergeant Bridger?” a slightly harried voice questioned.

“
I thought I
had got that part out of the way already.” He knew in his heart
that this would mean work; he could hear the telltale signs of the
Police dispatch room in the background. He also knew that if it was
work calling then he could kiss the rest of his night goodbye. He
looked over at the inviting lump hiding under the covers next to
him and gave in with a resentful groan.

“
What can I
do for you tonight then…?” His unusually good mood was fast
evaporating.

It had taken him less
than ten minutes from warm bed too cold alleyway and he did not
quite have his head around what had just happened. The guilty
feeling he should have been feeling for running out on her yet
again was fighting against the more primal feeling of frustration.
How many more chances would he have, she was willing, but from warm
body too cold it was a sharp contrast, and looking at what he could
see, Bridger knew that it was going to be a very long
night.

“
Bloody hell
Grant, who could do something like that…?” The broken mess lay
silently in front of them.

Detective Grant Wylie
smiled in his direction, never one to be too squeamish “You’re
right there, Mike; it is a ‘Bloody’ hell. Either that or we have
stumbled onto the set of a B-grade horror movie.”

They both stood silently
in the darkness of the alleyway, just outside the circle of the
high-powered lights, contemplating what was lying against the red
brown brick of the old Hercus building and why it was there.
Grant’s description of a horror movie set was not far wrong.
Bridger could not see where the body finished and the blood
started. It looked like an overzealous set designer had
misinterpreted what his brief was and designed a cliché instead. He
could see that the blood would have stopped flowing from the head
wounds post mortem though. If the concaved scull did not cause the
death, then the loss of what looked like of all of the blood a body
can hold, would have. Pooled in a thick red puddle around the head,
a small trail was making its way slowly towards the gutter. The
depravity that some people were capable of did not usually affect
him, but some scenes were stranger than others were.