Finally, having twice driven the length of the promenade, he pulled in at the curb, near a group of teenagers, and wound down his window.
“Oi, oi!” cried one. “Here’s a punter looking for a bit of bum action! Go talk to the man, Chrissy!”
The one called Chrissy spat on the ground and gave Elder a baleful look.
“I’m looking for the fair,” Elder called from the car. “Is there a fair in town?”
“You’re after kids, is that it? We know your sort, don’t we?” There were grins at this. Elder tried to smile back, as though he, too, were enjoying the joke.
“I’m just looking for the fair,” he said, making it sound like a not unreasonable request.
“Marine Parade,” said one of the crowd, waving a hand holding a can of beer in the direction of the Palace Pier.
“Yes,” said Elder, “but that’s a permanent fairground, isn’t it? I’m looking for a traveling fair.”
“Sorry I spoke. Here, give us five quid for some chips, guv.” The youth was slouching towards him, hand held out. Elder didn’t see anything dangerous in the young man’s eyes; just an idiot vacancy. He knew pressure points which would have the youth dancing in agony within seconds. He knew how much pain the body could stand, and how much less the mind itself could stand. He knew.
Then he sighed and handed over a five-pound note.
“The fair,” he said.
The youth grinned. “There’s a fair up on The Level. Know where that is?”
Yes, Elder knew where it was. He’d practically driven past it on his way down to the shore. He didn’t recall seeing a fair, but then he hadn’t really been looking.
“Thank you,” he said, driving on. Behind him, the youth was fanning himself with the banknote. Already his friends were gathering around like jackals.
The front at Brighton was all pebblestone beach and inescapable breeze, fun-rides and day-trippers. But farther up the town’s hill, past the Pavilion and the shops, was a large, flat, grassy park called The Level, crisscrossed with paths. Locals walked their dogs here, children shrieked on swings. And every year there came a fair. He wondered that he’d been able to miss it, but then he’d presupposed any fairground would be stationed along the promenade, where the pickings were richest. There weren’t as many stalls and rides as he’d been expecting. The usual waltzers and dodgems and rifle ranges, ghost train, kiddies’ rides, hot dog stalls. But no big wheel or dive-bombers, nothing that he would call a big attraction. Marine Parade had stolen a march on the traveling fair.
And everything was closed, save a couple of the kiddies’ rides which were doing desultory business. A monkey swung down over the children on one ride, operated by a sour-looking woman. The trick seemed to be that if a child pulled the tail off the monkey, the child got a free ride. Something like that. The fair proper would no doubt open up later on in the day. He parked Doyle’s car at a safe distance from The Level itself — he didn’t want errant hands wiping candy floss on it — and walked back. One ride was discharging its cargo. The woman who operated both ride and monkey came out of her stall to collect the money from the few kids waiting for the ride to start up again. She wore a leather bag slung around her neck, the sort conductors still used on some London buses. Elder noticed that the rides were old, certainly older than their cargo. There was a horse, a racing car with a horn, a tiny double-decker bus, a sort of ladybird from which most of the paint had flaked, a jeep with movable steering wheel, and a spaceship. There was heated competition for both the spaceship and the racing car.
“Excuse me,” he said to the woman, “where can I find whoever’s in charge?”
“That’s me.” She went on taking money, dispensing change.
“No, I mean in charge of the fair as a whole.”
“Oh?” She gave him the benefit of a two-second glance, then sighed. “What’s wrong now?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you council?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“What then?”
He paused. “If you’d just tell me where I can find...”
Having collected all the fares, she moved past him. “Mind yourself,” she said. “If you stay on there, you’ll have to pay same as the rest.” Back in her Plexiglas-fronted booth, she turned on a tape recorder. A pop song blasted out of the speaker overhead. Then the carousel started to turn, and she tugged her left arm, jiggling the monkey up and down, comfortably out of reach of the squealing children. Elder stood his ground by the open door. The children were waving at their parents as they spun slowly past them. One of the kids looked petrified, though he was trying not to show it. He gripped onto the steering wheel of his jeep, hardly daring to take a hand off to wave, despite the cajoling of his mother. Fear, Elder was reminded, was utterly relative, a shifting quantity.
As the allotted time of the ride came to its end, the woman lowered the monkey so that a girl could whip off its tail. Then she pulled the monkey up again and hooked her end of its line over a nail on the wall of her booth, holding it there. The music was turned down, but not off, the ride came to a stop, the parents collected their children. The boy from the jeep looked pale. The woman looked at them through the Plexiglas window, then turned to Elder.
“Still here?”
He shrugged. “I’ve nothing better to do.”
“Sure you’re not council?” He shook his head and she sighed again. “Try the caravan behind the waltzers,” she said. “The long caravan, mind, not the little one.”
“And who am I looking for?”
“His name’s Ted. That’s all, just Ted.”
And indeed it was.
“Just call me Ted,” the man said when Elder appeared at the caravan door and asked for him. They shook hands.
“I’m Dominic Elder.”
“Pleased to meet you. Now, Mr. Elder, what seems to be the problem?”
“No problem, I assure you.”
“Good, pleased to hear it. In that case, why don’t you come in?”
The caravan was large but cramped, the result of too many ornaments on too many occasional tables. Glass clowns seemed to predominate. There was a small two-seater sofa, and two armchairs, recovered in an orange-colored flowery print. Ted nodded towards a chair.
“Take a pew, Mr. Elder. Now, what can I do for you?”
It wasn’t until Elder was seated that he saw it was Ted’s intention to continue standing, arms folded, ready to listen. Elder admired the man’s grasp of psychology. Standing, he had authority over the seated Elder. They were not equals. That, at least, was the ploy. Ted might not be the man’s real name. He was in his fifties and wore his hair slicked back, his sideburns long: a Teddy Boy look. Perhaps the name had stuck. There was doubtless a comb in the back pocket of his oily denims.
“I’m looking for my daughter,” Elder said.
“Yes? In Brighton, is she?”
“I don’t know. I think she was in Cliftonville.”
“We were there the other week.”
Elder nodded. “She’s keen on fairs, I thought maybe somebody might have seen her wandering around...”
“How old is she, Mr. Elder?” There was sympathy in Ted’s voice, but not much. He was still suspicious.
“She’s twenty-nine,” Elder said. Ted looked suitably surprised.
“So it’s not a case of the kid running away with the fair?” he said, more to himself than to Elder. “Twenty-nine, eh? Got a photo of her?”
“Not on me, no. I was in Cliftonville, and when I heard about your fair, well, I rushed down here without thinking.”