Jackson sprinted along the path toward the two of them. There were other people closer, but they seemed benignly unaware of a girl being strangled in front of their eyes. Before Jackson reached them, the girl managed to do something swift and admirably effective that seemed to involve the heel of her shoe and Honda Man’s groin, and poor old Terry collapsed onto the ground with an ugly noise. Unmanned, Jackson thought. The girl didn’t hang around, instead she kicked off her shoes and started running back the way she had come, in the direction of the circus, and by the time Jackson reached Terence Smith, now retching with shock, the girl was out of sight.
Honda Man’s moans attracted a couple of passersby who seemed to be of the opinion that he was the victim of an assault and that the perpetrator of the assault must be the man standing over him. Been here, done this, Jackson thought. His brain was lagging vital seconds behind, still trying to compute the convergence of himself, his old pal Terry, and a girl who looked like the dead girl in the Forth. He had seen the crucifixes in her ears as she struggled with her assailant. You say coincidence, he thought, I say connection. A baffling, impenetrably complex connection, but nonetheless a connection. Jackson was torn between wanting to interrogate Terence Smith, with the added bonus of then beating him to a pulp, or running after the dead girl look-alike.
The decision was made for him by the arrival of a police car containing two uniformed constables, one male, one female, a breeding pair, who were soon out of the car and walking along the path in that determined way Jackson remembered well, slow enough to assess a situation but ready to accelerate at the drop of a hat. One of the passersby pointed at Jackson and shouted, “This is the man who did it!” Oh thanks, Jackson thought, thanks very much. He’d already been convicted of assaulting Terence Smith once already today, a second time would probably send him straight to jail. He took a deep breath, which hurt, and ran.
One of the police, the female of the pair, stayed with Terence Smith, who was still making a fuss over his manhood. Jackson would quite like to have known what exactly the girl did back there and hand on the arcane knowledge to the women in his life the next time they found themselves being lifted off their feet with a rope round their neck. God forbid.
The other constable lumbered along the path after Jackson. He was on the hefty side and normally Jackson could have outrun him easily, but he was handicapped by his bruised ribs, so he darted off the main drag into the tangle of caravans and lorries that surrounded the big top. He stumbled and tripped, knocked something flying. Someone shouted abuse at him, and he didn’t stop to find out who or why but carried on running, weaving in and out of the assortment of vehicles that made up the circus laager.
He paused inside an avenue of trucks to catch a breath. He could hear the policeman talking to someone. He rather hoped that some vagabond instinct among the members of the circus troupe would lead them to help him and misdirect the law (“He went that way”). No such luck. The police constable, unfit but dogged, passed across the top of the avenue of trucks. Jackson flattened himself against the side of a huge generator, but too late, the guy had spotted him, yelling something inarticulate in surprise at suddenly coming upon his quarry. The policeman in Jackson wanted to reassure him that he wasn’t dangerous, the guy didn’t have his partner with him, no one covering his back, and had no idea what Jackson was capable of, so he was probably more scared than Jackson was. What was he capable of? he wondered.
He didn’t hang around to find out, instead he was off again, helter-skeltering around the parked convoy. The chase was telling on him, his ribs aching so much he could barely keep upright. Just when he thought he was going to have to give up this game of hide-and-seek, someone or something (he hoped it was someone) grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the dark.
Not entirely dark, just enough light to make him realize he was somewhere in the hinterlands of the big top, the space where the performers waited to make their entrance. Ahead of him a tunnel led to the ring itself, it reminded him for a moment of the Colosseum. He had taken Marlee to Rome last year. They had eaten a lot of ice cream and pizza. All his recent memories were of holi-days.
There was enough light, too, to catch a glimpse of the knife glinting near his throat. His first thought was that it was Terence Smith with his Clue armory, but there was surely no way he could have got here so fast. He twisted his neck round, felt the knife scratching dangerously near an artery. The dead girl look-alike. She smiled. She had a feral look about her that didn’t invite smiling back. All that was needed were a few clowns and the night-mare would be complete.
“Shut up, okay?” she said. She sounded foreign, he didn’t know why that should be a surprise, everyone he encountered seemed to be foreign.
“Okay,” he agreed. She moved the knife an inch away from his neck. He was so close to her that he could smell the cigarette smoke on her, mingled with perfume. It made him want a ciga-rette. It made him want sex. An idea that surprised him, consid-ering the circumstances. He wondered if the earrings were the sign of a cult, some born-again Christian thing. She didn’t look like any Christian he’d met before, but you never could tell. Had she saved him from the police in order to kill him? That made no sense, but then nothing made any sense.
“You look like someone who’s dead,” he whispered. Yes, he had decided this was a conversation killer, but here he was using it anyway.
“I know,”she said. This was an unexpected answer. She lowered the knife a little more.
“Your sister?” he hazarded.
“No, friend,”she said, and with a shrug, “we look alike, that’s all.”
“Honda Man-Terence Smith-why did he attack you?”
Her green eyes narrowed and she laughed derisively. “The gimp?” she said contemptuously. “He’s idiot.”
“Yeah, I know he’s idiot, but he still tried to kill you.”
She made some kind of gesture that he suspected was obscene where she came from. Russia, by the sound of her. “Da,” she agreed. She seemed impressively unflustered by the fact that someone had just tried to kill her. He wondered if it happened to her a lot.
“I saw you at the circus,” he said.
“Circus is illegal now?” she said. She wasn’t good at small talk.
“What’s your name?” he ventured. “My name’s Jackson Brodie.” I used to be a policeman.
“I don’t have a name, I don’t exist,” she hissed, “and you won’t if you don’t shut up.” Really bad at small talk.
“We’re on the same side,” Jackson said. It seemed unlikely, but wasn’t his enemy’s enemy his friend?
“I’m not on side. Listen-”A little jab of the knife in his ribs to get his attention.
“That hurts.”
“So?”
He couldn’t imagine why he had worried about her being attacked. Another little poke with the knife in his ribs.
“Okay, okay, I’m listening,” he said.
“Stop putting your nose in places, I’m taking care of it.”