An Explosive Time (The Celtic Cousins' Adventures) Read Free Page A

smiles.
     
    Crombie knew he should make some attempt to re-interview the ringmaster, but the man scurried into the Big Top, shrugging into his red long tailed coat to start the matinee show on catching sight of him. Sighing, Crombie decided he really needed to get some lunch inside him before deciding what to do with this new information.
    He slowed passing a hot dog stall, tempted by the smell, until he noted the prices - four pounds - for a small hot dog - a skinny sausage in a bun! Crombie walked on; pleased his girls had never really liked circuses. They’d been more fun in his day, performing seals and monkeys, lion tamers and men being shot out of cannons. Having seen how that poor elephant spent the majority of her day though, it was probably a good thing that performing animals were becoming a thing of the past.
     
    According to Stephenson Senior, circuses would soon go the way of his elephant, and vanish too. This was one of the last six or seven still travelling, and Crombie dismissed his theory that a rival circus might be responsible for the animal’s disappearance. Most likely someone had pissed Bozen off, and in a fit of peevishness he’d freed Lulu’s chains. In fact, knowing the neighbourhood round here, it was entirely possible someone was hanging onto her in hopes of a reward. He saw immediately the flaw in this deduction. Bozen went missing twenty four hours before the elephant. Feeling a tug on his sleeve, Crombie turned to find himself looking down at a man in his seventies, a thin grey man with deep scored facial lines and a flat cap clamped over his skull.
    ‘Sir?’ Crombie prompted when the man didn’t speak. Swiping a hand across his mouth to mime he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak, the man pressed some photographs into Crombie’s hand, nodded and walked unhurriedly away, hands in pockets. Slipping the glossy photos into his own pocket, Crombie decided to examine them in a less public place. The North Pole Star pub would suit very well, and was just across the road. Crombie was certain that Tarquin Stephenson hadn’t told him everything, and knew that Crombie knew he was holding back. Crombie played with the idea of going back to arrest the prat, then dismissed it, thinking tomorrow would be soon enough.  
     
    For now though, Crombie crossed the road and strolled towards the North Pole Star pub, hoping he was in time to be served lunch. Instead of studying the photographs the gnome like man had given him, Crombie mused on how this part of London had got its name; maybe one of Shackleton’s many mistresses once lived in the area. More likely the pub had been renamed in the early 1900s, when it seemed the Edwardians would conquer the world, let alone both poles. If he strained to listen, a faint hurly gurly whirlitzer swirl of music drifted in the air; he could just make out the jaunty flags flying from the circus tents, framed by the viaduct of the railway bridge, which crossed the North Pole Road at the junction of Latimer Road.
    Back in the seventies, social developers declared the houses ‘slums’ and one side of Latimer Road had been demolished and replaced with light industrial warehouse/office buildings; giant multi-coloured lego bricks obscuring the old abandoned railway lines. Either money ran out or common sense prevailed and the other side of Latimer Road remained standing, although the majority of the three story houses served as offices and studios.  
     
    The old railway lines that skirted Wormwood Scrubs! Of course! Postponing his lunch yet again, Crombie rushed into Latimer Road, across the car park of a warehouse offering printing services, and vaulted over the six foot high metal railings topped with rusted spikes to steamroll his way down the embankment, kicking aside spiteful brambles and slimy undergrowth in his haste to test out his theory, grateful for the magnum boots giving his feet and ankles some protection against the unseen ground riddled with rabbit