The Clown Service (3 page)

‘Yeah,’ he laughed, deciding it was better to brush the comment off than dwell on it. ‘Stationery has teeth in the Civil Service.’

‘I imagine it’s the only thing that has. So what’s this new job of yours then?’

‘More of the same, really,’ Toby replied as noncommittally as he could – it was always easier to maintain a lie that was barely uttered in the first place. ‘Just a different department.’

‘And this is what I spend my taxes on. Christ! I’m still paying your pocket money, aren’t I?’

‘I’m sure it’s money well spent.’ Of course, Toby’s Section Chief hadn’t thought so and he was quite sure his father wouldn’t have either. All the more reason to keep his secrets. He tried to change the subject. ‘When are you coming up to London next?’

‘There’s a sale on the 23rd that’s probably worth the train ride.’

Like seeing your son isn’t?
thought Toby. ‘Maybe we could have lunch while you’re here.’

‘Look at you trying to take extra time off so soon into your new job.’

‘Just lunch, the department’s flexible on lunch.’

‘Well, it shouldn’t be,’ said his father, ‘it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.’

‘Forget it then.’ Toby wasn’t going to fight for it; he was only too happy to
not
see him. ‘Listen, I’d better go.’

‘Got something more important to do, have you?’ And, again, the laugh, just to make it quite clear that his father wasn’t really bothered. ‘I’m sure I’ll be talking to you again soon.’

The phone went dead and Toby spent a few minutes contemplating the red wine-stain on the rug.

Monday morning crept slowly across the city as Toby headed to the Piccadilly line like a man going to his death.

The raucous clatter of the Tube didn’t intrude upon him as he sat staring at his own reflection in the darkened glass of the window. He seemed to see someone he didn’t know anymore. Even his clothes looked uncomfortable. The suit that never quite fitted the way he hoped it would, the shirt collar that would never sit still. The man in his head never appeared in the mirror; it was always this fragile idiot.

He got off at Wood Green and ascended the stairway into a riot of traffic and pedestrians. The noise wrong-footed him as it occasionally had since his injury. It was all engines, shouting and the roar of life. A feeling of claustrophobia swelled up inside him and he dashed across the road looking for somewhere to catch his breath. Misjudging the lights, he narrowly missed being hit by a bus, a solid red wall of metal and glass that swung towards him as if out of nowhere.

The pavement hardly seemed safer. Having lost his rhythm he felt as if he were in everyone’s way, constantly swinging to one side or another as people converged on him. He had to fight
an urge to shout as he turned off the main road to find a place of relative silence.

Resting against a street sign Toby caught his breath, trying to tug the collar of his shirt away from his sweating throat. Was this it now? A promising career finished because of a series of mistakes and panic attacks? Had he fallen so far? The last few years had certainly rained punches on him: the shooting in Israel, the bomb attack in Basra, now Yoosuf … Everyone had their fair share of bad luck in this business, but his seemed particularly sour. It weighed on him. It made him feel spent.

The temptation simply to quit had surfaced repeatedly. A constant argument with himself that he could never quite resolve. Was he really cut out for this work? The way he was feeling now suggested not, mentally battered from one conflict after another, and yet … the more he suffered the more he was determined to push through it, to regain the strength he was sure he had once had. The act of giving up seemed a failure too far. The more it tempted him, the more he became determined to continue. He could be better than this –
had to be
better than this.

Checking the map on his phone to make sure he knew where he was going, with a deep breath, Toby pushed on. He moved back to the bustling street, like a deep-sea diver leaving the air-filled surface far behind him.

Past the mobile-phone shops and fast-food restaurants, the shopping precinct and the market, Toby worked his way along the main road. He grew more accustomed to the noise as he walked and was almost his old self by the time he reached the nondescript door that led to the offices of Section 37. It stood to the left of a cluttered window offering cheap international call minutes, phone-unlocking and cheque-cashing.

‘Lovely,’ he muttered, trying to decide between the two buttons mounted next to the flaking, purple-painted door. Neither was marked. He jabbed the upper one.

Inside the shop an angry Turkish man began hurling abuse at children loitering by the racks of cheap mobile-phone covers. If nothing else, Toby thought, his career had taught him to understand curses in most languages.

The door was opened by a jaded young woman in a silk dressing gown. It had been slung on in a casual manner, like a serviette draped over a nice slice of cake to dissuade flies.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘You woke me up.’ Most people would have registered a Russian accent, but Toby could be more precise. It was Armenian.

‘Oh,’ Toby said, ‘I’m sorry, I was after Mr Shining.’

Her shoulders sagged but she gave a soft, sleepy smile. ‘Wrong bell,’ she said, pointing at where he had pressed the upper, rather than lower button.

‘So sorry,’ Toby said, ‘do you think I might come in anyway?’

At that, the smile vanished and she held her hand out in flat-palmed denial. ‘Nobody visits August unless they are approved,’ she said. For a moment he thought her English was off and had been about to insist that it was actually May. Then he realised that his new boss must be called August. August Shining. It was not the most inconspicuous name a spy could wish for.

‘I’m expected,’ he assured her.

She settled a suspicious look on him and pressed the correct button. The buzzer could be heard going off up the stairs behind her.

‘Yes?’ asked a voice.

‘August,’ said the girl, ‘I have a man here who says you expect him.’

‘Well,’ said the man who sounded much older than Toby had envisaged, ‘what’s he like?’

Toby sighed as he was given a thorough once-over by the Armenian girl.

He looked over her shoulder at the dingy hall and the stairs that climbed towards the pale light of a window shrouded in yellowing dust and cobwebs. It certainly didn’t look worth the effort it was taking to gain access.

‘He’s late in his twenties,’ the girl said, ‘probably eleven and a half stone, maybe twelve. Spent a lot of time abroad, his skin shows too much tan for the weather here these last months.’

‘Sunbed?’ asked the voice.

‘Not the type,’ she replied. ‘He is alone and has been for long time, I think. He wears his clothes and hair like they are habits. He deals with them because he has to, not because he wants to be handsome.’

‘He sounds charming.’

‘And he’s stood right here,’ Toby reminded them both.

‘Oh, let him in,’ said Shining. ‘If he wants to kill me you can soon come to my rescue.’

‘Is damn right,’ she said, stepping back to let Toby pass. ‘I break his neck if he hurt my August.’

There was the sound of a door opening from above and Toby climbed around a corner in the stairway to come face to face with August Shining.

The man looked even older than his voice had suggested, with thin hair combed perfectly over a liver-spotted scalp. A white beard helped to hide some of the wrinkles, but his eyes were sharp – watching Toby from behind thin, designer wire-framed glasses. Wearing a fawn three-piece suit with a thick, dark-green checked
shirt, Shining looked something between an old-fashioned country gentlemen and a fold-out fashion spread from GQ.

‘I don’t think he’s here to kill me, Tamar,’ Shining commented. ‘You can try to get some more sleep.’

‘I will keep the ears open,’ the girl replied, ‘and if he turns out bad you can shout.’

‘I certainly will.’

Shining stepped back and gestured for Toby to make his way through the door ajar behind him.

The office for Section 37 was a nest of filing cabinets and comfortable soft furnishings. Bookshelves lined one wall, framed black and white photographs another. A pair of leather sofas formed an avenue for the window to pour in North London light; it spilled out onto a carpet that was manila-envelope brown.

‘Sit down,’ said Shining, pointing to one of the sofas, ‘I’ll just get some coffee on the go.’

He stepped out of the room and there came the distant sound of running taps and coffee filters being banged against the plastic of a swing bin.

Toby walked over to look at the book shelf. It was a combination of geographical texts, political manuals, occult books and trashy horror novels. He pulled out a book and looked briefly at the blood-stained woman on the cover. Apparently it was a ‘thrill-storm of gore’ and ‘a meaty must-read’. He returned the book and moved on to the photographs. They were of locations all over the world, from obvious tourist spots like the Eiffel Tower or the Sphinx to other, more obscure locations: a West German alleyway; a rain-soaked street in Portugal; an icy bandstand freezing its wooden bones in an indeterminate landscape.
Obviously they must mean something to Shining, but Toby couldn’t guess what. Places he’d worked possibly. If he’d been a member of the Service for as long as his age allowed, he must have seen his fair share of the world.

‘Do you take milk or sugar?’ came a voice from the kitchen.

‘No, thank you,’ Toby replied, having taken to drinking his coffee black as he kept running out of milk.

‘Then you’re easy to please,’ said Shining, coming back into the room with a pair of coffee cups, one of which he handed to his visitor.

Toby took it and stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, feeling stranded – in foreign territory.

‘My wailing wall,’ said Shining, nodding to the photographs before sitting down on one of the sofas and looking out of the window.

Toby found the conviviality disturbing. First he had been made a drink; now
he
was standing while his superior relaxed by the window.

‘It’s a good spot,’ said Shining, nodding at the view outside, ‘though I have no doubt my paymasters would begrudge my saying so.’ He looked to Toby and smiled. ‘The only reason people get sent here is when they’ve made someone stupid but important hate them.’ He gestured once again to the opposite sofa. Toby sat. ‘Was that how it was for you?’

Toby thought for a moment. Unsure whether to tell the truth or not. Eventually he decided it could hardly matter. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘I let someone get away from me on a mission.’

‘We’ve all done that. Why was this a particular problem?’

‘I was cocky. I let him get away because I didn’t pay attention. I underestimated him.’

‘And he surprised you?’

‘Yes. He hit me over the head and ran.’

‘Hit you with what?’

‘Does it matter? A bust of Beethoven.’

‘It matters. It would hardly be funny were it a crowbar instead of a porcelain ornament of a dead composer.’

‘I don’t find it particularly funny anyway.’

‘No, but I bet your colleagues did.’

Toby shrugged. ‘Probably.’

‘What do they call you?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘After it happened, they must have given you a nickname – what was it?’

Toby didn’t really see it was any of Shining’s business. He had hoped to leave the name behind with the transfer. ‘They called me Ludwig.’

‘Really? I would have guessed at Rollover.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m old enough to know who Chuck Berry was. Doesn’t matter.’ He took a sip of his coffee and fixed Toby with a penetrating stare. ‘Are you washed-up?’ he asked. ‘Do you deserve to be hidden away out here?’

Toby didn’t feel annoyed by the question, something that would surprise him when he thought back on it. ‘Depends where “here” is,’ he replied, ‘and what I’m expected to do.’

‘A sensible, if evasive answer. Section 37 is an anomaly within the Service. A borderless agency that nobody can quite decide who runs. Are we part of the SIS or the Security Service? Neither, even if pressed, will admit to us. The ugly date brought home after a drunken night out. For all that, you’re expected to
fight and, if necessary, die protecting your country. Does that sound unreasonable?’

‘Yes, but I’d probably do it if I had to.’

Shining smiled. ‘Good lad! Maybe we’ll be able to show them there’s life in Ludwig yet, eh?’

‘Do you have to call me that?’

‘No,’ Shining smiled, ‘but I probably will anyway. Never run away from the labels they give you. Wear them with pride and rob them of their sting.’

‘You’d need that philosophy,’ said Toby without thinking, ‘being called August Shining.’

Instead of being angered his new Section Chief laughed and nodded. ‘It’s not as florid as it sounds. I was born in August, and my parents were too busy to think of something better.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ Toby admitted, then immediately changed the subject for fear of getting onto the subject of his father. ‘So what exactly is it we do here?’

‘They didn’t tell you?’ Shining finished his coffee. ‘No. I imagine they wouldn’t. We’re the smallest department in the Secret Service, and exist purely by force of determination and my pig-headedness. We are charged with protecting the country or its interests from preternatural terrorism.’

Toby had to think about that. The words simply hadn’t made sense so he assumed he had heard them incorrectly. He repeated them out loud. ‘Preternatural terrorism?’

‘Absolutely. You’ve got a lot to learn.’

The sound in Toby’s head returned, that white noise of confusion that had assailed him when he was out on the street. It was the sound of a mind folding under the weight of things it simply didn’t want to process.

‘Do you believe in the paranormal?’ Shining asked. Toby simply stared at him, desperately wishing he had misunderstood the question, the word, the concept.

‘No,’ he responded, aware that the tone of his voice suggested he thought the answer obvious.