The Clown Service (13 page)

‘Who?’

‘A writer, prone to bursts of occult enthusiasm, extremely popular in the twentieth century. Doesn’t matter. My point is that magic tells you less about itself than about the user. The same force could appear in countless different ways, reflecting the tastes – the fears – of the person activating it.’

‘So we’re looking for an old gymkhana rider?’

‘Very funny.’

‘I was told Section 37 was where they put the clowns; I was just trying to fit in.’

‘The Clown Service? I rather like that …’

‘That’s because you have the thickest skin in intelligence. Are we safe now?’

Shining looked around. ‘I think so. Magic is also all about energy. You don’t waste it. What we experienced would almost certainly have been more than enough security to keep the casual intruder at bay.’

He stepped outside of the circle and motioned for Toby to do the same. ‘Mind the edges though; better to leave it intact in case we need it again.’

‘How does it work? The circle, I mean.’

‘For all that magic may seem chaotic, it’s bound very heavily by rules. Like any science. Accept that the horse and rider were manifestations, rather than literal things – the mask a certain force chose to wear. The mask I chose to face it with is the circle in the dust. It’s all about the principle. Old magic responds to old symbology. A spiritual firewall that the occult virus respects and does not cross.’

‘So it could have crossed it?’

‘Of course – it’s just a line in the dirt. But it never would. It’s an agreement. Rules must always be obeyed.’

‘If the occult is nothing but red tape, perhaps I have been trained in it after all. So is this the same warehouse you were monitoring all those years ago?’

‘The very same. Which is terribly interesting. I wouldn’t have expected it to have been preserved all this time.’ They
quartered the large room, examining everything, Shining continuing to voice his thoughts. ‘Unless it was just never cleaned up? No. Someone would have had to come along and hide the place away … And they would have had to do that after I was last here … But who could have done that?’

‘Krishnin?’

Shining turned and looked at Toby. ‘Couldn’t be. Krishnin’s dead.’

‘Can you be sure?’

‘Pretty sure, seeing that
I
killed him.’

Toby had no idea how to respond to that. Even though Shining had admitted to having blood on his hands – who didn’t in this business? – Toby still couldn’t picture him as a killer.

‘I had no choice,’ Shining added, perhaps seeing the look on the young man’s face.

‘You don’t have to justify it.’

‘Not to you, perhaps.’

They moved towards the stairs.

‘You sure it’s safe to go up there now?’ Toby asked.

‘No,’ Shining admitted, ‘but there’s nothing down here.’

The old man smiled and led the way up the ancient steps. He stopped halfway and looked back at Toby who had yet to start climbing. ‘If you want to wait down there, I don’t mind.’

‘Not a chance. Just thought I’d hang back till you’d tested how rotten the wood is.’

‘If I die, you’re out of a job.’

‘You say that as if it would be a bad thing.’

Once Shining had reached the top floor, Toby followed. He weighed more and the wood creaked under every step.

The second floor was clearly empty. Light shone from the
wide-open hatchway leading out to the ancient hoist. Several floorboards were missing, but Toby made his careful way over and looked out, gazing down on the street below. He watched a car make its ignorant way past them. A young couple wrestling with a map were clearly trying to find their way back to the tourist attractions. Toby paid careful attention as they drew up beneath him.

‘I wonder what would happen if I dropped something on them,’ he speculated. ‘Would they notice us then?’

‘Probably,’ said Shining. ‘As I said before, it’s all about perception. They have been persuaded not to notice us, that’s all. Same trick I used on the train.’

‘The train?’

‘Didn’t you notice the total lack of attention from other passengers yesterday?’

Toby admitted he had. ‘I thought they were just being typical Londoners.’

‘That makes it easier, certainly. This city is programmed to mind its own business. But the extra nudge I gave them meant we could talk in private.’

‘Like Cyril? The man you told me about yesterday?’

‘Ah, poor Cyril. That was more a natural gift, though he certainly learned to emphasise it. Truth is: it’s not difficult to make people refuse to acknowledge something, even if it’s right in front of them.’ Shining shrugged. ‘I think that sums up my career in one sentence.’

‘Yeah, I was wondering about that. I mean … The things you keep showing me – I don’t want to accept them. But I’m not an idiot. Why would I deny the evidence of my own eyes?’

‘Well – ignoring the fact that we’ve already proved the eyes
are not to be trusted – I’ll take the point as you intended it. It’s not that the rest of the Service disbelieves what I do – though, naturally, few even know I exist – more that they choose not to think about it. Accepting evidence I’ve presented and shoving it away in a box is one thing, but actively pursuing it is another. They leave me alone. They’d rather not be involved.’

Shining kicked at a pile of rags on the floor in irritation. ‘On the subject of not seeing what should be plain, I take it you’ve realised the problem we’re facing.’

‘We’ve tracked the radio signal to an empty building,’ said Toby, ‘but where’s the transmitter?’

‘It wouldn’t have to be huge, but we’d certainly have seen it if it were here.’

‘There aren’t any other rooms?’

‘No. I’ve been here before, remember?’

‘You going to tell me what happened?’

‘Later, when we’re out of here.’ Shining looked around, checking the roof, nimbly hopping over a couple of gaps in the floorboards. Then he sighed and moved back towards the stairs. ‘We’re wasting our time. Invisibility. Perception. Blindness. There’s far too much of that at the moment.’ He scratched at his beard. ‘Synchronicity or just a pain in the arse? It should be here and yet we can’t see it.’

‘Could it be buried?’ wondered Toby. ‘How powerful are these things?’

‘We’re talking about a shortwave radio transmitter,’ said Shining, ‘possibly an extremely old one. It’s not an iPod. We’re looking for a decent sized box and a whopping great antenna.’

‘The roof?’ Toby suggested.

‘Possibly,’ Shining admitted, ‘but I don’t know how we can get a decent look.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Toby, ‘I do.’ He leaned out of the hatchway towards the hoist, grabbing hold of the hanging chain and yanking on it to test its strength.

‘You’re not going to go swinging out there?’

‘Of course I’m bloody not – I’m not that mad. But I can climb up onto the winch support and from there I should be able to see across the roof.’

‘Well,’ said Shining, as he came back over, ‘if you’re sure. Would you like me to hold your jacket?’

Toby handed it to him, gritting his teeth and pulling himself up onto the heavy wooden crossbar. It creaked but held. Making a concerted effort not to look down, Toby used the roof to steady himself, grabbing hold of the edge of the slates and slowly getting to his feet until he was standing upright on the winch support. One of the tiles came away in his hand and his stomach flipped as he fought to keep his balance. The tile smashed on the road below.

‘Try not to kill anyone,’ said Shining. ‘I include you in that, obviously.’

‘How kind.’

Grabbing another tile, wiggling it first to make sure it would hold, Toby stretched up so that he could see over the edge. The roof was empty, at least on the side that was facing the street.

‘If there’s anything on the far side I wouldn’t be able to see it from here,’ he shouted, ‘but as I’m not going up there, we’ll just have to take it as read.’

‘And as your superior I’m happy to sign off on that,’ said Shining, ‘so get back in here before my staff consists again of just me.’

Toby sat on the cross bar, turned around and lowered himself.
After a brief, terrifying moment of hanging in space and being sickeningly aware of the fact, he managed to get his foot back onto the ledge and Shining pulled him inside.

‘Obviously,’ the old man said, ‘I’d have been only too happy to have climbed out there myself, but you seemed to want to prove yourself.’

‘Well, if you won’t let me do any of the magic stuff, I have to make myself useful somehow.’

Shining pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen. After a moment, the sound of the numbers station started playing from its small speaker.

‘
Nine hundred and ninety nine, five, five, seven
…’

‘Oman put an app on my phone that lets me listen to the broadcast,’ Shining explained. ‘He can be terribly clever about that sort of thing.’

‘It’s started counting down. It said one thousand yesterday.’

‘That’s rather ominous. I do hope we haven’t somehow set it off by coming here.’

‘I’d find that easier to believe if there was actually anything here. Wonder how quickly it’s counting?’

‘
Nine hundred and ninety eight, five, five, seven, five, five, seven; nine hundred and ninety seven
…’

‘I’ll time it,’ said Toby looking at his watch.

They both listened to the radio repeating the same numbers over and over until …

‘
Nine hundred and ninety six, five, five, seven, five, five seven
…’

‘Three minutes.’

‘Check it again, in case it’s not regular.’

Toby did so.

‘
Nine hundred and ninety five, five, five, seven, five, five, seven
…’

‘Same again, we drop a digit every three minutes.’

Toby pulled his phone from his pocket and opened a calculator app. ‘Which would mean we’d hit zero in …’ he tapped away on the screen, ‘just under fifty hours.’

Shining smiled. ‘How lovely. Nothing sharpens the attention quite like a countdown, does it?’

‘Counting down to what?’ Toby didn’t expect Shining to answer; it was more an expression of his own frustration.

Shining had wandered over to the open hatchway again. Something he saw through it made him gasp and run towards the stairs.

‘What?’ Toby asked, wincing at the prospect of the old man stumbling at any moment.

A little more carefully, Toby followed on behind. By the time he had cleared the rickety stairs, Shining was already at the front door and charging through it.

‘Damn him!’ Shining shouted, just as Toby caught up with him in the street outside.

‘What was it?’

‘I saw him again,’ said Shining, pacing up and down in frustration, ‘standing out here, looking up at me.’

This was the first time Toby had seen Shining lose even the slightest bit of self-control.

‘Saw who?’

‘Krishnin.’ Speaking that name deflated Shining. He stopped pacing and looked towards Toby. ‘Which probably sounds absurd.’

‘You always sound absurd. I’m getting used to that. You say you’ve seen him
before
– recently?’

‘Yesterday. That’s what set me thinking about this place. But I knew I couldn’t have … I
couldn’t
have.’

Toby shrugged. ‘Everything you say seems impossible to me. What makes this any more impossible than everything else?’

‘I saw him die!’ Shining insisted. ‘I killed him. My first. The first life I ever took.’

‘And now he’s back. That seems no more unlikely to me than alternative dimensions, invisible radios, Angels of Death and disappearing warehouses. Business as usual for Section 37, I’d have thought.’

Shining smiled. ‘Thank you. I appreciate you’re being supportive.’

‘I’m being honest. So a dead Russian’s back from the grave? Fine. If I can work with everything else I can work with that.’

Shining’s phone continued to squawk out the numbers station broadcast.

‘
Nine hundred and ninety four, five, five, seven, five, five, seven
.’

‘Turn that thing off for now would you?’ asked Toby. ‘Then tell me what it was that happened here between you and Krishnin. Then maybe we can decide what to do next?’

Shining nodded. ‘A plan.’ He reached for his phone.

‘
Nine hundred and ninety three, five, five, sev—
’

By the time I arrived back at Farringdon Road, O’Dale was getting impatient.

‘Thought you’d gone and got yourself shot,’ he said, appearing at the head of the stairs as I climbed up them. ‘Another half an hour and I’d have had to figure out how to send a secure message to the powers that be.’

‘I’m fine,’ I assured him, ‘but I appreciate your concern.’

‘Can’t file my invoice without you, can I?’ He gave a grunt that might have been a laugh; equally it might not. ‘Whatever you’ve been up to, it must have been more interesting than sitting around here. The Ruskies have barely opened their mouths to one another all morning.’

‘Then you might appreciate a little field trip I had planned for later on tonight.’

If the Colonel wasn’t going to allow me any more men, O’Dale was all I had. As much as it might go against protocol
to leave the surveillance post unmanned, I was damned if I was going to walk into that warehouse on my own.

‘You always did extol the virtues of a trigger finger,’ I told him. ‘Meet me at the warehouse at one o’clock and bring your hardware with you.’

‘Late nights better pay extra,’ he said, jotting down the address as I dictated it to him. But the thought of a bit of action seemed to have put a discernible spring in his step as he went down the stairs and out of the house.

I settled down on the chair he had left warm and began to unwrap a set of sandwiches I’d picked up from a delicatessen. I ate to the sound of occasional footsteps and slammed doors from the surveillance speakers. While there was little in the way of conversation, the people were active enough.

I passed the afternoon reviewing the taped surveillance while also keeping an ear on current events. O’Dale had been right – there was nothing coming out of that house that was of any interest. It was so dull that at four o’clock I loaded up fresh tape in the recorders and lay on the bed, planning a quick nap that soon extended beyond my intention. I woke at eight, startled, ashamed and angry.