“Yes. Gone. Vanished. Everyone is very angry.”
“Has it been reported to the police?”
“Psht!” She rolls her eyes. “Of course it hasn’t! Why would it? A grown man, a strange man, a traveling man. They would have no interest in him.”
“But where do you think he might have gone?”
“Nobody knows. Nobody really knew him. A very quiet man, and, like I say, a very strange man. He left after the last performance of the bank holiday weekend. One minute he was there, the next his caravan was empty, his things packed: he’d gone. No note. Nothing.”
“So he didn’t have a family? A girlfriend?”
“Ha!” She laughs drily. “No, he most definitely did not have a girlfriend. He has been here with us for nearly twenty years and never in that time has he even had a friend.”
“A loner?”
“Yes. A loner. And, you know, his persona… thisPatch. He made it too real. We had to call him Patch, even when we were not at work. He would mime, even when he was not wearing his makeup, his costume. Thechildren, they didn’t like him. Nobody really liked him. But he was a very good clown. So, we kept him…”
“And now he’s gone?”
“Yes, now the clown has gone. Maybe he’ll come back. Maybe he won’t. First he runs away to the circus, and now he has run away from the circus…” She sighs. “You could talk to the others; they might know.”
“The others?”
“Yes, the other clowns. Dave and Steve.”
“Raimondo and Mikki?”
“That’s correct. They’re in that blue-and-white caravan, just behind the showers?” She gestures behind her. “You see?”
“And it’s OK for me to…?”
The woman nods. “Say I sent you. My name is Morea.”
Jane knocks gently against the plastic-clad door of the caravan. A man’s voice says, “Come in.”
Jane breathes in, uncertainty racing through her nervous system. Then she pulls down the handle and peers into the unit. She sees two men sitting on the sofa area at the back of the caravan. Both are in sportswear. One, wearing a baseball cap, is eating a wrap and watching the other, who is wearing pink Nike slides, play a video game.
“Steve?” she says. “Dave? Morea sent me.”
“Yeah,” says the guy with the wrap. “I’m Steve.”
The other guy doesn’t take his eyes from the TV screen.
“Come in,” says Steve. “Excuse the mess.”
She steps into the unit. It’s not messy, but it does smell overwhelmingly of whatever is inside Steve’s wrap.
“Thank you.”
The other guy makes a noise of annoyance at something that has just happened in his game and then slams down his console. He looks at Jane and says, “Hi.”
“I’m really sorry to disturb you,” she says. “But I’m looking for your colleague. Jasper? Or… Patch?”
“Yeah,” says Dave. “Aren’t we all.” His accent is pure estuary. Steve’s is a little more West Country.
“I was just talking to Morea. Out there. She said he disappeared? On the bank holiday?”
“Yup,” says Steve. “That’s right. Did a runner. Left us in the shit.”
