The Clown Service (19 page)

If only her brother could say the same on the latter point.

According to the budget paperwork, number thirteen was a Section 37 safe house. In reality it was August Shining’s history stored on three chaotic floors.

April removed the front door key from her handbag and began the frustrating business of coaxing the lock to accept it. The lock needed replacing but August was too forgetful about the little, practical things in life to do it. He visited the house no more than once a year. He would dump a new batch of files as well as collected evidence and personal items he no longer had the room for in his own flat, then lock the door on them and walk away. April pondered on the psychology of it until the door finally let her in. Perhaps this entire building was an act of compartmentalisation. August took all the business he couldn’t bear to part with, shut it away here and returned to life unburdened.

In the front hall, she hung her hat and coat on a bust of Kitchener that had once talked and offered up ancient state secrets. It had been silent for decades, but she felt more comfortable knowing it was covered up and not watching her as she walked around the place.

There was a frustrating lack of order to the house. August admitted that had he known how full the place would become, he would have implemented a system when he had first started using it. But things had quickly got out of hand and the job of organising them became more than any sane man could bear. The chaos had deepened year by year.

April started in the front room, pulling open the heavy velvet curtains to allow in a little light. The flapping fabric kicked up clouds of dust that swirled around her as she began to open boxes and case files.

She worked her way past a tea chest filled with restaurant receipts, several oblong boxes containing Silver Age American comic books (taking a few minutes to flick through an issue of
Doom Patrol
because she liked the cover) and a leather holdall filled with what appeared to be toy rubber snakes. Delving deeper she found a set of case reports from 1976, a signed picture of James Herbert and a run of
Evening Standard
s from the ’80s.

‘I despair of you, you silly old man,’ she muttered before moving into the kitchen. If she could at least make herself a cup of tea, the hunt might be a little more tolerable. She filled a kettle and put it on the hob, crossing her fingers that August had kept up with the gas bill. The ring lit and she pottered around the cupboards on the hunt for teabags while the kettle burbled and whistled like a lunatic talking to itself. Doing this, she discovered that most of the cupboards were given over to sample jars: liquid evidence gathered by August over the years. At the point of either giving up or seeing what ‘Ectoplasmic Residue Borley Rectory 1993’ tasted like in boiling water, she discovered a small tin of Earl Grey teabags in the bread bin.

She took her tea upstairs, walking between the narrow corridor afforded by the tottering piles of magazines on either side. She noticed several stacks of
Fortean Times
, esoteric partworks and copies of the
Eagle
.

Upstairs there were three bedrooms and a bathroom with another set of steps that would take her to the attic, a room she
didn’t intend to go into. The last time she had been here had been with August and there had been frequent sounds of banging from behind the closed hatchway, something he had dismissed as being due to ‘the more unruly volumes in my library’. She had decided then that she had no wish to come face to face with any book that could send showers of plaster dust raining down on the carpets by beating on the rafters.

The first bedroom contained physical evidence; items August had gathered from all over the world. She took a moment to reminisce, taking in the still-captured scents of foreign climes. A poster of Aleister Crowley was pinned to the door of the wardrobe with a knife that she recognised as the ‘Blade of Tears’, a sacrificial weapon that August had picked up in China. In the far corner, a dusty display case contained the stuffed remains of an ancient orangutan (nicknamed Edgar by August). There appeared to be things moving within its dirty fur.

The second bedroom was all about paperwork and, with a truly regretful sigh, this was where she set about her most thorough exploration. Interrupted only by a phone call from Toby, she spent the next hour sifting backwards through years of the absurd and horrifying exploits of Section 37. She reminded herself of the details of the Brent Cross exorcism, the possession of Arthur Scargill and the night in the early ’80s that the entire population of Wales had forgotten how to read.

She finally found herself in the ’60s, having almost boxed herself in between three towers of cardboard files. Predictably enough, the deeper she dug, the earlier the reports were dated. Finally, barely able to see in the shadow created by the discarded folders around her, she laid her hands on the folder covering August’s beginnings in the Service. She flicked through the
yellowing sheets of foolscap, reassuring herself that the winter of 1963 was fully represented, and began the ignoble task of climbing back out of the mess she had made. She was precariously balanced across a stack of index binders when she heard a banging at the front door. It wasn’t someone knocking, rather someone trying to get it open. She had left it unlocked, and therefore, warped as it was, it was only a few seconds before it creaked open and she heard feet on the wooden flooring of the entrance hall.

Moving as carefully as she could, April continued on her slow way towards the door of the bedroom. Downstairs she heard the visitor moving through the front room and into the kitchen. Once she was sure they were at the furthest reach of the house she moved a little quicker.

April had no idea whether the intruder was friendly or not. She decided not. Pessimism had allowed her to live a long life. Nobody but her and August knew of number thirteen (at least she assumed not, though her brother could be remarkably foolish about that sort of thing – even as she had berated Toby for suggesting as much, she knew he had been quite right). Whoever was moving around down there was either extremely unlucky to have entered the place during one of the rare occasions the building was occupied, or they had followed her here. If it was the latter then she had to wonder what had taken them so long to decide to come in. Actually, she wasn’t sure that she did want to think about that. If someone’s orders had changed from surveillance to interception it couldn’t mean anything good.

The footsteps returned to the entrance hall just as she stepped out onto the landing. Was there somewhere she could barricade herself in, call Toby and then wait it out?

The intruder began to climb the stairs.

In a few moments, they would reach the turn in the old stairway and both parties would be able to see each another. On one hand, that was the point at which April would know for sure what she was dealing with. On the other, it was the point at which she would no longer be able to hide. But where could she hide? She could make a run for the attic? The intruder would most certainly hear her, especially as she tried to open the hatchway door, but she might be able to keep them at bay. Hesitating over what might lurk in there delayed her too long.

The man appeared on the stairs. He was dressed in black military fatigues. His skin was pale, shining unnaturally in the light from the landing window. He
glistened
. His mouth was open and rigid, a strangely expressionless grimace. He stared at her for a moment then charged up, his feet slamming hard on the steps and sending piles of magazines toppling in his wake.

April stepped back into the first bedroom, looking around for something to defend herself with.

The man came crashing after her. She yanked the Blade of Tears from its place in the wardrobe door, the poster of Aleister Crowley fluttering face down to the floor, as if its subject was feeling uncharacteristically coy about what was going to happen next. April considered trying to use the knife to intimidate the man, then discounted it. Another reason she had lived a long life was that she rarely wasted time with threats. She thrust the knife forward, embedding it in the man’s chest. There was a cracking sound as it struck his hard skin, and he stood there, as if perplexed but not overly inconvenienced by what had happened.

‘Oh dear Lord,’ she said, ‘I rather think you’re like the chap
Toby found in Aldgate, aren’t you? How can I kill you if you’re already dead?’

She shoved her way past him, making for the door, but he sprang to life once more, snatching at her hair and yanking her off her feet. April fell with a loud cry to the floor of the landing. The man came after her, his big, pale hands, reaching down to grab her by the head. Though in pain from the awkward fall, April knew that if he got a firm grip she would be incapable of breaking free. If the knife hadn’t troubled him, an old lady’s punches were unlikely to be a problem. She rolled along the floor, pulling her way towards the stairs.
If she could just manage to outrun him
…

April was just getting to her feet when he crashed into her from behind. With an angry scream she toppled to the left, curling herself into a ball. If he was going to kill her she was damned if she was going to make it easy for him. Then, suddenly, he flipped to the right, his foot slipping on the glossy cover of a spilled copy of the
Fortean Times
. He crashed down the stairs, rolling and flipping around the bend to continue his descent out of sight. She listened as banisters splintered, kicked out by the man’s flailing feet. He finally hit the bottom with a resounding crash.

This would be her only chance. If he was still alive – well,
active
– he would soon be back on the offensive. She had to get moving now. She got to her feet, wincing at old joints that were crying out from the hammering they’d received, and limped down the stairs. Turning the corner April now saw what had caused that one last crash. The bust of Kitchener had toppled from its podium. Of her attacker there was no sign.

April went back upstairs, into the second room and picked
up the file she’d been after. She made her careful way downstairs again, expecting her attacker to reappear at any second. He didn’t. He appeared to have vanished into thin air.

Forsaking her coat and hat, she hurried to the back door, hopped over the garden fence and made her shaky way through the rear gardens of her neighbours.

‘Can I help you?’ asked a surprised-looking man pegging out washing as she came limping through his flowerbeds.

‘No thank you, dear,’ she replied, giving him a wave and pulling herself over the wall into the next garden along. ‘I think I can manage.’

A Russian sets great stock by his homeland. Even one who has defected, like me, finds it hard to let go. Patriotism was a badge you could wear, a patch you stitched over the wounds of the state. I’m over-simplifying, of course, but you’re not here for a lesson in loving your country. You want to hear about Krishnin – don’t worry, we’ll get to him in time. In those days the country was a ruin of haves and have-nots; things were hard, and the only way you ignored the fractures, the compromises and the discomfort was to sew that patch on and swear to yourself that everything you did was for the best.

I never wore it comfortably.

My father had been stationed over here under a French passport since the late fifties. He spoke the language fluently and his accent was natural enough, especially to London ears.

My mother’s death left me with no other family, so he was given leave to have me with him. Had anyone thought him important, it would not have been allowed; I would have been a distraction, a weakness, a target. But he was a nobody, an unused asset who spent most of his life working as a grocer in Surbiton. Some nights he would get drunk and rage about
having been forgotten, abandoned over here to a pointless life. In truth I think he rather enjoyed it. I certainly did. Would you rather be a teenager in Moscow or London? I was there at the birth of rock’n’roll and shrinking hemlines.

He liked to pretend he was important – don’t we all? He received his final insult from the bumper of a car on Tottenham Court Road, eliminated not by enemy agents but by a salesman who wasn’t looking where he was going. My father died as he had lived, unnoticed and still feeling ill-used.

I should have been brought back to Russia but the lack of interest towards my father extended to me. I ended up in the care of another officer, a dour, isolated man who blessed me with his indifference. His attitude towards me was fluid: I was a burden, but I was also a useful worker. Soon, I was performing courier runs and surveillance tasks, the grunt work that nobody else wanted.

When Olag Krishnin arrived in the winter of ‘63, I was seventeen, and soon found myself one of the men under his command, shifting packing crates, cooking food, keeping watch. We were based in a warehouse by the river, a good location; it was a credible hive of activity in the middle of a dead zone. Nobody paid us much attention.

People claimed Krishnin was charming, but I never saw it myself. Perhaps it was the unblinkered eyes of youth, but when I met him I knew I was in the company of a monster. Later, as I began to get authority and respect (and eventually the section he had once controlled) I found out what his masters had thought of him. They were afraid. He terrified them. You think it was August Shining that ended Krishnin’s career in espionage? Only by default. He had already been marked as a threat. Agents had
been sent to deal with him. If Shining hadn’t pulled the trigger, someone else would have done. He was uncontrollable, he was dangerous and, above all, he was quite, quite, mad.

I came across him once, just sitting on his own in the corner of that warehouse. I don’t think he knew I was watching him but he just sat there in the semi-dark, whispering to himself and working at the skin beneath his fingernails with the point of a stone he had found. That was the Krishnin I remember, not the authoritarian, the magician, the master spy, no … To me Krishnin will always be the madman in the dark making his fingers bleed.