The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(16)

“What d’you need to speak to him about?”

Ryan retrieved his warrant card and held it out for inspection.

“I’m Detective Chief Inspector Ryan and this is Detective Sergeant Frank Phillips. We’re conducting some enquiries Mr O’Neill might be able to help us with.”

They watched the man’s pupils widen, then he ran an agitated hand through his messy brown hair.

“Um, right. Okay. Charlie’s in the Big Top for a rehearsal. Shall I go and get him?”

“What’s your name, son?” Phillips asked, before he could run off to warn anybody of their arrival.

“Duke.”

“Have you got a last name, Duke?”

“O’Neill.”

Ryan’s ears pricked up.

“We understood Charles O’Neill to be the owner of the circus—what’s your relationship?”

“Yeah, dad transferred it all to Charlie,” Duke replied, without any hint of malice. “He’s better at managing everything.”

“You’re brothers, then?”

“Yeah, he’s older, by three minutes.”

Which meant that Duke was Samantha’s uncle, Ryan thought, and she’d told him there was nobody else she could turn to.

Interesting.

By now, Duke was skipping from foot to foot in his eagerness to get away, an action made all the more ridiculous thanks to the garish polyester yellow and white clown suit he was wearing. It came complete with a giant flower lapel that squirted water, big red boots, pristine white gloves, and a neon green wig he’d tucked underneath his arm.

They assumed it was too early for the stage make-up and giant red nose.

“Why don’t you lead the way?” Ryan said, gesturing him forward.

“Right, yeah. Let me just—”

“So, it must be a hard job, trying to make people laugh all the time?” Phillips asked, overriding him with a gentle hand on his lower back as they walked towards the Big Top.

Duke shrugged his skinny shoulders.

“Um, yeah, I s’pose.”

Phillips tried again.

“What made you choose that over becoming Dangerous Duke, the cannonball guy?” he asked, with a friendly wink.

That elicited a short laugh.

“Actually, I wanted to be an acrobat,” he admitted, a little sheepishly. “But dad didn’t think…ah, well, it was a long training course and I was needed here, to help out.”

Why d’you want to prance about like a monkey? Is that what you are, boy? his father had said. Are you a monkey? Why can’t you be more like your brother?

Duke was walking quickly across the grass, so Ryan deliberately slowed his own stride to counteract it.

“I suppose you know your brother’s wife, Esmerelda?” he asked, catching the man off guard.

Duke tripped over a tuft of grass, though whether it was thanks to his over-large shoes or a sense of disquiet, they couldn’t tell.

“Why do you want to know about Esme?” he asked.

“You know her, then?” Ryan asked, as they approached a side entrance to the Big Top. It consisted of a hidden flap in the tarpaulin, cleverly concealed at the seams so he might never have seen it.

“Yeah, I knew her,” Duke muttered.

With that, he threw back the tarpaulin and ushered them into another world.





CHAPTER 10


Back at St Peter’s Wharf, Lowerson and Yates stood over the body of what had once been a man. The forensic team had beaten them to it, setting up a large protective tent and photographing the remains in situ before carefully transferring the body onto a wide sheet of thick black plastic which would, they knew, become a kind of shroud when it was taken to the mortuary.

In the early days, Lowerson might have admitted to feeling slightly nauseated by the sight of a body in decay, particularly when it had been left alongside the usual day-to-day household detritus that people threw away for very good reason.

However, he prided himself on having overcome such paltry complaints.

As if to contradict that assertion, his stomach gave a violent lurch, and, when he glanced at Yates’ stony profile, he was mortified to see that she looked cool and calm by comparison.

“Male, approximately forty years old. Looks like he suffered severe head trauma and multiple lacerations to the face and torso,” she said, with as much detachment as she could muster. “Hard to tell the extent of the damage or how long it’s been out here but, given the concentrated areas of insect infestation—”

Lowerson took a couple of deep breaths through his teeth.

“It’s probably a gangland kill.”

Yates ran her eyes over the body and wondered how he could tell.

“You mean because it was dumped in the bin?”

“Nah, because somebody’s taken the tips of his fingers,” Lowerson said, eyeing the bloodied stumps that were blooming in shades of yellow and green. “They do that to make it harder for us to identify the body. Same reason his face is messed up. I bet we don’t find any wallet or keys, either.”

Yates looked back down at the body.

“Huh,” she said, feeling disappointed she hadn’t seen it for herself. “I guess there’s always something new to learn.”

“Same goes for all of us,” he said, and broke into a smile as Faulkner approached them dressed in his perennial garb of white polypropylene overalls, hood and mask, which he tugged down briefly to greet them.