‘What a bloody circus.’

Just when I thought I’d seen it all, here it was – a new page in the album of the ridiculous. The lion roared, despite the efforts of its keeper to calm it. The lion was in a cage. So was the animal-rights activist with the megaphone. He was busy announcing to all who would listen – not that anyone had a choice – exactly what he thought of the plight of the four-legged performers. The caged activist’s support crew, including someone in a gorilla suit, cheered and waved their placards with every expletive, provoking further roars from the lion. The immense and dangerously grumpy man being restrained by his colleagues had to be Terry Bennett, owner of the Darling Brothers’ Circus. I wasn’t sure who was the more menacing: the man or the lion.

The presence of television cameras and a sizable rent-a-crowd sure as hell didn’t help matters.

Fabulous.

‘What the hell is all this?’ Smithy said, as we wove our way through the hordes that had gathered to gawk at the entertainment sited at the southern end of the Kensington Oval. On any normal day, the expansive, lush green fields that were the Oval were home to cricket matches or football – awash with swarms of little kids and their overanxious parents yelling overambitious instructions from the sideline. Not today.

The circus was set up at the pub end and had that unmistakable carnival look, with strings of coloured lighting, enormous inflatable clowns, brightly painted animal trailers and the double-peaked, damned impressive big top that dominated the scene. Smithy looked less than excited by it all. ‘I thought the call-out was because of some students breaking into the lion cage. No one mentioned protesters.’

‘Looks like they’re an added bonus,’ I replied. Nice bonus. Normally we wouldn’t be sent out for a ruckus like this, but due to the Highlanders playing a Super Rugby game at the stadium, most of the regular officers had been called in for crowd control, so they’d had to dip into the CIB pool for this one. After a look around the motley mob here, I thought I’d rather be dealing with drunks at the rugby.

‘Well,’ Smithy said. ‘What do we tackle first?’

‘Ugh, I hate protesters,’ I said, my face screwing into a grimace. ‘Why don’t you go check the idiot in the cage, see if you can persuade him to make a graceful exit? Get rid of his cheerleaders too; mass evictions always were your speciality. I’ll talk to Mr Bennett.’