The Blurred Man (5 page)

“Do you think he’s OK?” Tim asked.

“I don’t think he’s oak anything!” I replied. “Come on!”

We scrabbled to our feet just as the clown set off across the grass, speeding towards us in a tiny, multicoloured car. I looked ahead with a sinking heart. We really were in the middle of nowhere, with grass all around, the river in the far distance and nobody else in sight. Anybody who had come to the park at that time of night would now be in the circus, watching the show.

“Run, Tim!” I gasped.

The clown was getting nearer. I could see his face, even less funny than usual, the grease paint livid in the moonlight. In seconds he would catch up with us and run us down. But then there was an explosion. The bonnet of the car blew open, the wheels fell off, water jetted off the radiator and smoke billowed out of the boot. The clown must have pressed the wrong button. Either that, or the car had done what it was designed for.

“Which way?” Tim panted.

I turned and looked back. For a brief, happy moment, I thought we had left the circus folk behind us, but then something whizzed through the darkness and slammed into the bark of another tree. It was a knife – but thrown from where? I looked up. There was a long telephone wire crossing the park, connected to a series of poles. And, impossibly, a man was standing, ten metres above the ground, reaching for a second knife. It was a tightrope walker. He had followed us along the telephone wires and was there now, balancing effortlessly in mid-air. At the same time, I heard the sudden cough of an engine and saw a motorbike lurch across the lawn. It was being driven by one of the brothers in white leotards. He had two more brothers standing on his shoulders. The fourth brother was on top of the other two brothers, holding what looked horribly like an automatic machine-gun. The motorbike rumbled towards us, moving slowly because of the weight of the passengers. But as I watched, it was overtaken by the three sisters on their unicycles. The moonlight sparkled not only on their sequins but on the huge swords which one of the other performers must have given them. All three of them were yelling in high-pitched voices, and somehow I knew that I wasn’t hearing a Russian folk song. The man on stilts came striding towards us, moving like some monstrous insect, throwing impossibly long shadows across the grass. Somehow he had got ahead of us. And finally, to my astonishment, there was a sudden bellow and a full-sized adult elephant came lumbering out of the trees with a girl in white feathers sitting astride its neck. This would have to be the lovely Tina Trotsky. And despite the law, the Russian State Circus did have an animal or two hidden in its big top.

They had an elephant! Did they also, I wondered, have lions?

Tim had seen it too. “They’ve got an elephant!” he exclaimed.

“I’ve seen it, Tim!”

“Is it African or Indian?”

“What?”

“I can never remember which is which!”

“What does it matter?” I almost screamed the words. “It won’t make any difference when it stamps on us!”

The circus performers were closing in on us from all sides. There was a rattle from the machine-gun and bullets tore into the ground, ripping up the grass. The dwarf I had seen in the caravan had woken up. It now turned out he was a fire-eating dwarf … at least, that might explain the flame-thrower he had strapped to his back. We had the elephant, the motorbike and the unicycles on one side. The dwarf and the stilt man were on the other. The tightrope walker was still somewhere overhead. The human cannon-ball was disentangling himself from the tree.

Things weren’t looking good.

But then a car suddenly appeared, speeding across the grass. It raced past one of the unicyclists, knocking her out of the way, then curved round, snapping the stilt man’s stilts in half. The stilt man yelled and dived head first into a bank of nettles. The elephant fell back, rearing up. Tina Trotsky somersaulted backwards, feathers fluttering all around her. The car skidded to a halt next to us and a door swung open.

“Get in!” someone said, and already I knew that I recognized the voice.

“Are you a taxi?” Tim asked. I think he was worrying about the fare.

“It doesn’t matter what it is, Tim,” I said. “Just get in!”

I pushed Tim ahead of me and dived onto the back seat. There was another rattle of machine-gun fire, a burst of flame and a loud thud as a second knife slammed into the side of the door. But then the car was moving, bouncing up and down along the grass. I saw a bush blocking the way, right in front of us. The driver went straight through it. There was a road on the other side. A van swerved to avoid us as our tyres hit concrete, and a bus swerved to avoid the van. I heard the screech of tyres and the even louder screech of the drivers. There was the sound of crumpling metal. A horn blared.

But then we were away, leaving Battersea Park far behind us.

It’s like I said. I’d never liked the circus. And the events of the night had done nothing to change my mind.

“Well, well, well. This is a very nasty surprise. The Diamond brothers! Having a night at the circus?”

It was the driver of the car, the man who had saved us, who was speaking. He had driven us directly to his office at New Scotland Yard. It had been a while since we had last seen Detective Chief Inspector Snape. But here he was, as large as life and much less enjoyable.

It had been Snape who had once employed Tim as a police-constable. He had been no more than an inspector then – and he’d probably had far fewer grey hairs. He was a big, solid man who obviously worked out in a gym. Nobody got born with muscles like his. He had small blue eyes and skin the colour of raw ham. He was wearing a made-to-measure suit but unfortunately it had been made to measure somebody else. It looked as if it was about to burst. His tie was crooked. So were his teeth. So were most of the people he met.

I had never known his name was Freddy but that was what was written on the door. He had an office on the fourth floor, overlooking the famous revolving sign. I had been involved with Snape twice before: once when we were on the trail of the Falcon, and once when he had forced me to share a cell with the master criminal, Johnny Powers
^*
. He wasn’t someone I’d been looking forward to meeting a third time – even if he had just rescued us from the murderous crowd at the Russian State Circus.

His assistant was with him. Detective Superintendent Boyle hadn’t changed much since the last time I’d seen him either.
His
first name must have been “Push”. That was what was written on his door. Short and fat with curly black hair, he’d have done well in one of those BBC documentaries about Neanderthal man. He was wearing a black leather jacket and faded jeans. As usual he had a couple of medallions buried in the forest of hair that sprouted up his chest and out of his open-necked shirt. Boyle looked more criminal than a criminal. He wasn’t someone you’d want to meet on a dark night. He wasn’t someone you’d want to meet at all.

“This is incredible!” Tim exclaimed. He turned to me. “You remember the horoscope in the newspaper! It said I was going to meet an old friend!”

“I’m not an old friend!” Snape exploded. “I hate you!”

“
I’d
like to get friendly with him,” Boyle muttered. He took out a knuckleduster and slid it over his right fist. “Why don’t you let the two of us go somewhere quiet, Chief…?”

“Forget it, Boyle!” Snape snapped. “And where did you get the knuckleduster? Have you been in the evidence room again?”

“It’s mine!” Boyle protested.

“Well, put it away…”

Boyle slid the contraption off his hand and sulked.

Snape sat down behind his desk. Tim and I were sitting opposite him. We’d been waiting for him in the office for a couple of hours but he hadn’t offered either of us so much as a cup of tea.

“What I want to know,” he began, “is what the two of you were doing at the circus tonight. Why were the performers trying to kill you? And what happened to Boris the balloon-seller?”

“Someone killed him,” I said.

“I know that, laddy. I’ve seen the body. Someone stuck a knife in him.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “The circus people thought it was us.”

“That’s an easy enough mistake to make when you two are involved.” Snape smiled mirthlessly. “We went to the circus because we wanted to talk to the balloon-seller,” he explained. “Luckily for you. But why were you interested in him? That’s what I want to know.”

“I wanted to buy a balloon,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me, Diamond! Not unless you want to spend a few minutes on your own with Boyle.”

“Just one minute,” Boyle pleaded. “Thirty seconds!”

“All right,” I said. “We were interested in Lenny Smile.”

“Ah!” Snape’s eyes widened. Boyle looked disappointed. “Why?”

“We’re working for a man called Joe Carter. He’s American…”

“He thinks Lenny Smile was murdered,” Tim said.

Snape nodded. “Of course Smile was murdered,” he said. “And it was the best thing that ever happened to him. If I wasn’t a policeman, I’d have been tempted to murder him myself.”

Tim stared. “But he was a saint!” he burbled.

“He was a crook! Lenny Smile was the biggest crook in London! Boyle and I have been investigating him for months – and we’d have arrested him if he hadn’t gone under that steamroller.” Snape opened a drawer and took out a file as thick as a north London telephone directory. “This is the file on Lenny Smile,” he said. “Where do you want me to begin?”

“How about at the beginning?” I suggested.

“All right. Lenny Smile set up a charity called Dream Time. He employed two assistants … Rodney Hoover, who comes from the Ukraine. And Fiona Lee. She’s from Sloane Square. We’ve investigated them, and as far as we can see they’re in the clear. But Smile? He was a different matter. All the money passed through his bank account. He was in financial control. And half the money that went in, never came out.”

“You mean … he stole it?” I asked.

“Exactly. Millions of pounds that should have gone to poor children went into his own pocket. And when he did spend money on children, he got everything cheap. He provided hospitals with cheap X-ray machines that could only see halfway through. He provided schools with cheap books full of typing errrors. He took a bunch of children on a cheap adventure holiday.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It was in Afghanistan! Half the children still haven’t come back! He bought headache pills that actually gave you a headache and food parcels where the parcels tasted better than the food. I’m telling you, Diamond, Lenny Smile was so crooked he makes an evening with Jack the Ripper sound like a nice idea! And I was this close to arresting him.” Snape held his thumb and forefinger just millimetres apart. “I already had a full-time police officer watching his flat. It’s like I say. We were just going to arrest him – but then he got killed.”

“Suppose he isn’t dead,” I said.

Snape shook his head. “There were too many witnesses. Mrs Lovely, the woman who lived next door, saw him leave the flat. Hoover and Lee were with him. There was Barry Krishner, the driver. And Boris…”

“Wait a minute!” I interrupted. “Mrs Lovely didn’t actually see anything. Barry Krishner has gone mad. I’m not sure Hoover and Lee can be trusted. And someone has just killed Boris.” I remembered what Mrs Lovely had told us. “Mrs Lovely said that someone had been asking questions about the balloon-seller,” I went on. “I thought she was talking about you … the police! But now I wonder if it wasn’t someone else. The real killer, for example!” Snape stared at me. “I think Boris saw what really happened,” I concluded. “And that was why he was killed.”

“Who by?” Snape demanded.

“By Lenny Smile!”

There was a long silence. Snape looked doubtful. Boyle looked … well the same way Boyle always looks.

“What do you mean?” Snape demanded at length.

“It all makes sense. Lenny Smile knew that you were after him. You say you had a policeman watching his flat?”

Snape nodded. “Henderson. He’s disappeared.”

“Since when?”

“He vanished a week before the accident with the steamroller…”

“That was no accident!” I said. “Don’t you get it, Snape? Smile knew he was cornered. You were closing in on him. And Joe Carter was coming over too. Carter wanted to know what had happened to all the millions he’d given Dream Time. So Smile had to disappear. He faked his own death, and right now he’s somewhere in London. We’ve seen him! Twice!”

That made Snape sit up. “Where?”

“He was at the circus. He was in the crowd. We saw him about a minute before Boris was killed. And he was at the cemetery. Not underground – on top of it! I followed him and he ran away.”

“How do you know it was Smile?” Snape asked.

“I don’t. At least, I can’t be sure. But I’ve seen a photograph of him and it looked the same.”

“We don’t know much about Smile,” Snape admitted. “Henderson was watching the flat, but he only saw him once. We know when he was born and when he died. But that’s about all…”

“He didn’t die. I’m telling you. Dig up the coffin and you’ll probably find it’s empty!”

Snape looked at Boyle, then back at me. Slowly, he nodded. “All right, laddy,” he said. “Let’s play it your way. But if you’re wasting my time … it’s your funeral!”

“There was no funeral,” I said. “Lenny Smile isn’t dead.”

“Let’s find out…”

I’ll tell you now. There’s one place you don’t want to be at five past twelve on a black November night – and that’s in a cemetery. The ground was so cold I could feel it all the way up to my knees, and every time I breathed the ice seemed to find its way into my skull. There were the four of us there – Snape, Boyle, Tim and myself – and now we’d been joined by another half-dozen police officers and workmen, two of whom were operating a mechanical digger that whined and groaned as it clawed at the frozen earth. Tim was whining and groaning too, as a matter of fact. I think he’d have preferred to have been in bed.

But maybe it wasn’t just the weather that was managing to chill me. The whole thing was like a scene out of
Frankenstein
. You know the one – where Igor the deformed Hungarian servant has to climb into the grave and steal a human brain. Glancing at Boyle, I saw a distinct physical resemblance. I had to remind myself that two days ago I had been enjoying half-term and that the following day I would be back at school, with all the fun of double geography and French. In the meantime I had somehow stumbled into a horror film. I wondered what was going to turn up in the final reel.