The Blurred Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

nowhere.
    So where did we go now?

A NIGHT AT THE CIRCUS
    The next day was a Saturday. Tim was in a bad mood when he came in for breakfast. He’d obviously got out of bed the wrong side: not a good idea, since he slept next to the window. At least there was food in the fridge. The money that Joe Carter had paid us would last us a month, and that morning I’d cooked up eggs, bacon, tomatoes, sausages and beans. The papers had arrived – the
Sun
for me, the
Dandy
for Tim. An hour later the two of us were so full we could barely move. There’s nothing like a great British breakfast for a great British heart attack.
    But the truth is, we were both down in the dumps – and this time I don’t mean the flat. We were no nearer to finding the truth about Smile. Rodney Hoover and Fiona Lee, the pair who ran Dream Time, were obviously creepy. According to Mrs Lovely, the next-door neighbour, they had half-carried Smile downstairs just before his fatal accident. Had he been drunk? Or drugged? They could have thrown him in front of the steamroller – but if so, why? As Tim would doubtless have said, they’d have needed a pressing reason.
    Barry Krishner, the driver of the steamroller, hadn’t been able to tell us anything. After his encounter with Tim, it would probably be years before he talked again. He might babble and jibber, but I guessed talking would be a little beyond him. The police had presumably investigated and found nothing. Maybe there was nothing to find.
    And yet…
    Part of me still wondered if Lenny Smile really was dead. I remembered the man I had glimpsed in Brompton Cemetery. He had looked remarkably like the man I had seen in the photograph, and had certainly taken off fast enough when I spotted him. But if Lenny wasn’t dead, where was he? And who was it who had disappeared under the steamroller?
    “I give up!” Tim exclaimed.
    He seemed to be reading my mind. “This isn’t an easy case,” I agreed.
    “No!” He pointed. “I’m talking about this crossword in the
Dandy
!”
    I ignored him and flicked over the page in my newspaper. And that was when I saw it. It was on the same page as the horoscopes. An advertisement for a circus in Battersea Park.
    Direct from Moscow
THE RUSSIAN STATE CIRCUS
Starring
The Flying Karamazov Brothers
Karl “On Your” Marx – The Human Cannon-ball
The Fabulous Tina Trotsky
Three Sisters on Unicycles
And much, much more!
    There was a picture showing a big top, but it was what was in front that had caught my eye. It was a figure in silhouette. A man selling balloons.
    “Look at this, Tim!” I exclaimed, sliding the newspaper towards him.
    Tim quickly read the page. “That’s amazing!” he said. “I’m going to meet an old friend!”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “My horoscope. That’s what it says…”
    “Not the horoscopes, Tim! Look at the advertisement underneath!”
    Tim read it. “This is no time to be going to the circus, Nick,” he said. “We’re on a case!”
    “But look at the balloon-seller!” I took a deep breath. “Don’t you remember what Mrs Lovely said? There was a witness when Lenny Smile was killed. It was a man selling balloons. I thought that was odd at the time. Why should there have been a balloon-seller in Battersea Park in the middle of the night?”
    “He could have been lost…”
    “I don’t think so. I think he must have been part of the circus. There’s a picture of him here in the paper. Maybe the balloon-seller was advertising the circus!”
    “You mean … on his balloons?”
    “Brilliant, Tim! Got it in one.”
    Tim ripped the page of the newspaper in half. He must have accidentally caught hold of the tablecloth, because he ripped that in half too. He folded the paper into his top pocket. “It’s your turn to do the washing-up,” he said. “Then let’s go!”
    In fact we didn’t go back to Battersea until that evening. According to the advertisement, there was only one performance of the circus that