Free Certain Death by Tanya Landman

“No… That theory doesn’t work.” He sighed with irritation. “The angle would have been all wrong.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Everyone in the audience was looking up at Irena. That’s why Ana got hit between the eyes when the bullet ricocheted off. If Yuri had fired straight across at her, it would have hit her in the neck.”
    “The neck…” I echoed. Suddenly my heart gave a lurch. “She couldn’t look up! Ana had that neck brace, remember? No wonder she gripped my arm like that. It had nothing to do with Irena’s act – she must have looked across the ring and seen Yuri. She recognized him and gasped. The poor woman must have been trying to tell me!”
    Graham’s voice came out in a small, scared whisper. “So are we assuming that Yuri the sharpshooter is, in fact, a war criminal?”
    “I’m not absolutely certain,” I said grimly. “But I can tell you one thing for sure. If he is, we’re not going to let him get away with it.”

the missing
bullet
    When I told Graham what I thought we should do next, the colour drained from his face. “Are you sure we can’t just go straight to the police?” he asked faintly.
    “Evidence,” I said. “We need evidence.”
    “We’ve got the note,” he protested. “That proves Peepo didn’t kill himself.”
    “It’s not enough. Inspector Humphries thinks the case is closed. He won’t listen to a pair of kids rambling on about something that happened years and years ago in another country unless we can prove we’re right.”
    “OK,” he conceded. “Although I don’t like it.”
    “I’m not particularly keen myself,” I replied, “but we’re not letting that man get away with killing Ana and Peepo and all those other people!”
    My plan was to sneak into the big top as soon as the show was over. The bullet that had been fired at Irena must have gone somewhere. I was hoping we could find it – or, failing that, locate a hole in the tent fabric or a mark on the frame that would prove that two pistols had been fired. If we were lucky, we’d find the evidence we needed, make a quick call to the police and then be back in our separate homes, lying in bed and looking ill, by the time our mums got back from work. If we didn’t at least get that bit right we’d be in Very Big Trouble.
    We didn’t have long to wait until the end of the show, and twenty minutes after the last audience member had left the big top the performers trooped out and shut themselves in their caravans, presumably to eat and rest before they had to do the whole thing again in the evening. We watched Yuri shut his door behind him.
    “Right,” I said. “Let’s go.”
    Our routine for breaking into the circus was now as well oiled as the Bouncing Bellinis’ act. We slithered under the fence with the practised ease of commandos and wriggled under the caravans until we reached the box office. Then it was just a matter of a short sprint across open ground to the big top and another crawl under the canvas.
    We accomplished our mission without being spotted, but fear made us both breathless. By the time we were standing in the empty ring we were wheezing and it took us a few minutes to calm down.
    As soon as we’d got our breath back, we started our search – but it was harder than I’d thought. Without the performers falling over themselves to sell us stuff or the audience jostling to get the best seats, it all looked different. We couldn’t work out exactly where we’d been sitting.
    “There, I think,” I said, but Graham contradicted me.
    “We were further round. Next to that pillar, don’t you remember?”
    I trusted Graham’s memory for that sort of detail more than mine, so I didn’t argue.
    “OK. If I was here,” I said, sitting down, “and Ana was next to me here, Yuri must have been over there, directly opposite. So if he fired at Irena, where do you think the bullet ended up?”
    “It could be almost anywhere,” said Graham. “But if our theory is