The Clown Service (17 page)

‘Where were you five minutes ago?’ I quizzed him.

‘Warming up my lunch,’ he said, holding up a steaming Tupperware box. ‘That allowed?’

‘Sorry – not having the best morning.’

‘You don’t know bad days until you have to deal with
my
customers. What can I do for you?’

‘I want the app that monitors the radio broadcast,’ I said, pulling my phone out of my pocket. ‘Can you do that?’

He looked at my phone. ‘Where’s the boss?’

‘Busy.’ I had no idea how much I should trust anyone at this stage and I wasn’t about to blurt out everything that had happened.

He nodded. ‘Isn’t he always? I can’t put it on that without jailbreaking it.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Just do it.’

‘Fine. And I’ll only charge you thirty quid, company discount as it were.’

Cheeky bastard.

‘Whatever. Can you do it straightaway?’

‘Yeah, but it’ll still take me a while.’

I thought about it. The idea of leaving my phone with him wasn’t comfortable but if Shining had trusted him then I supposed I should do the same. I needed that app.

‘OK, I’ll be upstairs. How long do you need?’

‘Come back in an hour, forty-five minutes – if you’re lucky.’

I left the phone on his desk and walked around the corner to the office entrance. Which is when I realised that I hadn’t been given a set of keys.

I didn’t have it in me to be angry anymore; I just pressed Tamar’s bell and steeled myself for an argument.

Eventually she appeared, this time she was at least properly clothed, in a pair of jeans and a crop top with ‘Superstar’ encrusted on it in gold sequins.

‘Remember me?’ I asked, ‘August’s friend.’

‘And I know you’re his friend because?’

‘Because I really am. In fact, I work with him.’

‘That doesn’t make you friend,’ she replied. ‘The men I “work with” – they are certainly not friends.’

‘Please let me in.’

‘Why you not call him?’

‘Because he’s not in.’

‘Where is he?’

‘I …’ I was spent by this point, frustrated and tired now the anger and panic had left me. ‘I don’t know. I need to try to find him. He’s in trouble and he needs me to help him.’

She looked at me and, after a moment, her entire mood softened. She reached out, took my hand and pulled me inside, shutting the door behind us.

‘I have a spare key for the office,’ she said, leading me up the stairs as if I was a child, ‘and I will help how I can. August is very dear.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose he is.’

‘Well,’ said a voice from the landing above us, ‘I suppose that’s
one
word for him.’

And that was how I first met April Shining.

‘Might I suggest we let the poor boy sit down?’ April said, shooing me into the office ahead of both herself and Tamar.

‘I’m all right,’ I tried to say, but there is nothing as dominant as an April Shining in full flow. She’s a hostile weather front in a cardigan and beads.

‘Nonsense, it’s obviously all gone horrendously tits up and you need to take stock, bring us up to speed and then we can get on with getting things back on an even keel.’

Somehow, without planning it, I found myself seated behind the desk.

‘Get the kettle on, darling,’ April encouraged Tamar. ‘I dare say we’d all appreciate something warming and, as my brother never had the common sense to stock a reasonable supply of medicinal alcohol, we’ll have to make do with tea.’

Tamar didn’t argue. Like me, I’m not sure she quite knew how.

‘Look,’ I began, ‘this is all very kind, but I haven’t really got time for socialising. I’m afraid I have a lot of work to do.’

‘Naturally,’ April replied, ‘which is precisely why I said you should bring us up to speed.’

This was a step too far.

‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss anything,’ I insisted. ‘Your brother and I—’

‘Are the nation’s last great hope for survival against the forces of darkness,’ she said, collapsing onto the sofa in an eruption of patchouli scent. ‘It’s terribly exciting, and Tamar and I know all about it.’

‘I doubt that …’

‘Oh, my sweet little man, don’t imagine there’s a thing August doesn’t tell his two Valkyries. We are his rock, his last line of defence, his—’

‘Shocking breach of national security?’

‘Poo to that! You men and your secrets.’

‘Secrets are important. Even if you’re cleared to know what your brother does for a living, I can’t believe that he would give you any real information about it.’

‘Perhaps he just knew whom to trust?’

‘Apparently everyone in the Greater London area,’ I replied.

‘Oh hush now, my brother’s not an idiot – which you must have realised, however briefly you may have worked with him. The work you do here is unconventional on every level, so if you want to get anywhere, you have to go about it in an unconventional manner.’

I shrugged. I had hardly spent the morning behaving in an exemplary fashion and Shining’s lack of security protocol seemed my least important problem.

‘Besides,’ April continued, ‘you don’t really have the first idea who I am and what I do in the government. One doesn’t like
to flash one’s credentials around – it’s vulgar and boring – but August isn’t the only Shining sibling to have ended up working behind the scenes on national business.’

‘And I am his bodyguard,’ announced Tamar as she returned with three mugs, one of which she dumped in front of me somewhat aggressively. ‘Head of security.’

‘Right.’ I had no idea what else to say. I had spent the last couple of days being surrounded by absurdity. Sooner or later you have to look to the bigger picture and let the little things go.

I told them what Shining and I had been doing and what had happened. If that was a mistake then, to hell with it, just one more my life was littered with. I was going to need all the help I could get to pull off a successful operation in the next forty-eight hours. When you no longer have a viable career to worry about, it’s amazing how quickly you home in on the important parts of the job. I began to understood why Shining had become the man he was.

When I had finished talking, I made my way over to the filing cabinets and began to search for old files that might be pertinent to Krishnin.

‘Oh August,’ April said, ‘you finally get a nice young man to help you with the creepy stuff and then you go and get yourself kidnapped or killed.’

‘Not killed,’ I said, ‘at least not yet. Krishnin will want to know how much we know; that’s the only reason he could have for kidnapping August. Standard protocol – take an officer, interrogate them, ascertain how far your operation is compromised.’

‘“Interrogate them”,’ repeated Tamar. ‘That not good, not in this work. He will be hurting August.’

‘My brother is made of stronger stuff than people give him
credit for,’ said April, ‘and we won’t help him by sitting here fretting. Eyes forward, my petal. Let us concentrate on the mission in hand.’

‘There’s nothing here older than a couple of years,’ I said, slamming the filing cabinet shut.

‘Of course not,’ said April. ‘Section 37 hasn’t been sat on its bottom for the last fifty years you know. August’s old case files are safely hidden away. You leave that part to me. Whatever reports he filed I can dig out.’

Something occurred to me. ‘From what he told me, the night that he and O’Dale visited the warehouse they found a sample of some form of chemical. I don’t suppose O’Dale …’

‘Long dead, darling. Drank himself to death at the arse-end of the ’70s. If they did bring any evidence out though, I’m sure I can find it. A report on its contents anyway.’

‘An original sample would be too much to hope for after all this time, I suppose, though I feel we’d have a much greater chance of analysing it now than they did back then.’

‘I’ll see what I can find, but yes, I can’t imagine there’ll be anything but paper for us to work on.’

‘What should
I
do?’ asked Tamar.

‘No idea at the moment,’ I admitted. ‘We just need to get every bit of information together that we can.’

‘I could go to warehouse and try to find him. Krishnin must have been seen.’

‘You’d think so, yes, though he vanished into thin air, so I wouldn’t bank on it.’ I kicked the filing cabinet in frustration. ‘That’s the bloody problem! I’m not prepared to deal with this kind of thing. It’s all nonsense to me. He could have been snatched by leprechauns for all I know.’

‘Don’t be silly, darling, the leprechauns keep themselves to themselves since the ceasefire in Northern Ireland.’

I stared at her and she fluttered her eyelashes in a manner that she no doubt thought of as coquettish but just struck me as smug.

‘You’re as bad as he is,’ I said. ‘You know what I mean, this is not a situation I’m trained to handle. I don’t know the rules, the possibilities … it’s all above my head.’

‘Rubbish, you’re an
intelligence
officer. Now use some. For what it’s worth though, I think you’re right to keep his disappearance a secret. We’re on our own – Section 37 always is.’

As if to reinforce her point, the office phone started ringing and it took me a moment to realise that I was the only one who should answer it.

‘I don’t even know how he answers the bloody phone!’ I exclaimed.

April sighed and took over. ‘Dark Spectre,’ she said, ‘publishers of the weird and wonderful.’

Our cover was a publishing house?

She listened for a moment. ‘That’s quite all right. Our senior editor is out of the office at the moment, but I’m fully capable of handling your enquiry.’

She listened a little more then rifled around the desk for a pen and a piece of paper. ‘Yes,’ she said, while taking notes, ‘fine. I’ll send one of our men right over. His name’s Howard Phillips. He’ll introduce himself.’ She put the phone down.

‘Who the hell’s Howard Phillips?’ I asked.

‘You are, dear, at least for today. That was one of August’s contacts at the Met. It appears they’ve found a dead body that fits his brief rather more than theirs.’

‘I haven’t the time to be chasing other things,’ I insisted. ‘We have to focus on the operation in hand.’

‘Up to you, of course, but she’s expecting you outside St Mathew’s in Aldgate.’

‘St Mathew’s?’ I remembered the bizarre message from the newspaper seller. ‘Fine, I’ll go.’

‘Shining? Wake up. I know you can hear me.’

‘I can hear you.’

‘We must talk.’

‘I suppose we must.’

‘You got old.’

‘Yes. You didn’t. Which is fascinating. Perhaps not quite as fascinating as the fact that you shouldn’t even be here, but fascinating nonetheless.’

‘I shouldn’t be here?’

‘No. Of course you shouldn’t. You should be dead.’

‘How can you be so sure I’m not?’

‘The fact I’m talking to you?’

‘We know better in our business: things are not always as they should be.’

‘No. That’s true. Still, this would be my first conversation with a dead man.’

‘Really? I used to interrogate them all the time.’

‘Echoes. Shades. A walking, talking dead man? That’s new to me.’

‘Perhaps you were mistaken then. Would that make you more comfortable? Perhaps I’m not dead at all.’

‘No. No, sorry that won’t do. I know you died. You’ll forgive me if it’s tactless to bring it up. I
know
you died. I was the one who killed you.’

‘I’ve forgiven you.’

‘Then maybe you’ll untie me? My old bones aren’t what they once were.’

‘I think not. Forgiveness will only stretch so far.’

‘A drink of water then?’

‘Perhaps. Later. I must admit I wondered if you’d still be alive yourself. You’re very old.’

‘Very. We Shinings were built to last. Extraordinarily resilient.’

‘Time will tell.’

‘A threat?’

‘I would take no pleasure in torturing an old man to death.’

‘Even the old man who killed you?’

‘Even him. But we must talk.’

‘And what is it you would like to talk about? Cabbages and kings?’

‘I would like to know what you know. I think that would be helpful. I think that would be sensible.’

‘How long have you got? It’s been a long old life – as you kindly point out. I know a lot of things …’

‘But what have you told others? You always did surround yourself with agents and freaks. But how important are they? Who in power might listen to them? My sources tell me that you are operating on your own. And now I have you. Perhaps that
will be enough? When the entirety of Section 37 is tied to a chair and totally vulnerable, even the most cautious man would have to admit its potential threat is diminished.’

‘They would.’

‘And yet you smile. You are alone, aren’t you?’

‘I’m sure your sources were quite thorough. Section 37’s been a one-man band for years.’

‘Yes. The world moved on, didn’t it? My own work seems to have been ignored. The department disbanded.’

‘These are impoverished times. Your country is no longer what it once was.’

‘We shall see about that. It has always struggled to thrive under unimaginative leadership.’

‘Since the glorious days of Stalin?’

‘You mock, but at least he had vision. That said, no, I had no love for the old dictator. My father died under his regime. Stalin was a maniac. But perhaps that is also what they say of me?’

‘And are you?’

‘I am … determined. I am an aggressor. I want to attack, to grind this country beneath my heel. I want power. I want control. I want … death. Yes, perhaps I am a maniac after all.’

‘Perhaps you are. And is that really how you want to be remembered?’

‘Remembered? I don’t know if that’s important to me. I resented the fact that my government turned against me, but I think that was more frustration than a feeling of injustice. They weren’t willing to do something that could so easily be done. And will be done. Soon.’

‘Ah yes – the countdown. Wonderfully theatrical. I take it I triggered that by entering the warehouse?’

‘A basic safeguard, in case you were more of a threat than you appear. So, I say again, what do you know?’