‘In the event one or some of them were brought to trial because they’d killed anyone, they’d have to deal with me first.’ Although Terry Bennett tried to deliver this line with great bravado, I could see the bluster had been sucked out of him and the full realisation of what was about to happen and its ramifications were sinking in. Besides the huge disruption to his operation and, no doubt, a fair amount of public scrutiny, he had to face the possibility that one or more of his company were responsible for murder. He’d take that pretty personally. Also, once word got out the police were investigating the circus, I imagined gate sales would diminish somewhat. This must have occurred to him too.

‘Okay, so if we cooperate fully with this, will you guys keep the fact Darling Brothers is under suspicion a secret from the press? If it gets out, we’ll be crucified. No one will bring their kids along to see the show if they think we could be involved in this. You’re still supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in this country, so it’s your duty to protect our rights too, you know.’

I looked at the DI to see what his reaction would be. I’d have thought he’d get some sick satisfaction from destroying a man like Bennett.

‘I can’t make any guarantees. Word has a way of sneaking out on these things. But I do think it is in the public’s and the police’s best interests for this to be as discreet as possible. Your set-up here is very open and visible, so we don’t want any scenes if we can avoid it. I’ll see what we can do.’

Perhaps I’d underestimated the DI. But he did have a very good point. We’d already had to deal with hot-headed animal-rights activists and adolescent stupidity. The last thing we needed now was a mob making judgements and meting out their own form of justice.

18