Guy Adams - The Clown Service

‘There’s no point in just pulling him in,’ said the Colonel. ‘We need to know what he’s been doing here all this time. Keep tabs on him, size him up, give me something to work with.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘give me what you’ve got and I’ll liaise with the boys in blue.’

b) Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, London, 19th December 1963

You couldn’t blame Special Branch for balking at surveillance duty. It was (and is) the most excruciatingly dull business.

Krishnin had taken occupation of a little terraced house just off Farringdon Road. Using their usual persuasive tactics, Special Branch had forced their way into the house opposite. Having been convinced that their cellar was about to fill with sewage unless fixed by the local council, the occupants were now taking a holiday with the wife’s sister in Cornwall. We’d slap a little concrete around once done and they’d be none the wiser.

Their bedroom window gave a good view of Krishnin’s house. My predecessors had shifted a cheap dresser out of the way so that a desk and chair could be placed there, shaded by net curtains.

We made an unwelcome intrusion in that little room of frilled valances and floral wallpaper. A bored copper had been poking around – there was evidence of his nosiness all over the place. I did my best to cover up after him, strangely uncomfortable – given the reason I was there – with intruding into their lives. The bedroom was littered with personality, pictures in frames, pots of half-used make-up, opened letters (which I had no doubt the previous surveillant had taken the time to read). We never think how we might look to others as they poke through these, our private spaces, rooms that are extensions of ourselves.

Nobody had had the opportunity to install listening devices across the road so I was soon left to wonder what point I was serving, sat there staring at a house’s empty windows. I would know if Krishnin left the house or if anyone visited him. As intelligence went this was pathetically thin. The fact that he had been there for some time just made it worse.

It’s not that it was unusual to discover a foreign agent living on our soil – the Russians weren’t idiots; they knew their tradecraft. There were bound to be enemy agents working under cover identities up and down the country (we certainly had a number of our people behind the curtain, after all). Espionage would be plain sailing if we knew everything the moment it had happened. Still, the fact that Krishnin had been present for so long and yet had remained beneath our attention either meant he was up to nothing of any great importance, or he was playing a decidedly long game. One had to assume the latter, of course – spies are paid to be pessimists – but I couldn’t see how our limited surveillance was going to bring us any closer to the truth.

I had hired a private contractor so that I had cover should I feel the need to do anything radical like sleep. He was a burly private detective by the name of O’Dale. He’d acquitted himself well in the war and came vetted for Service use.

He arrived a couple of hours later and immediately started earning his wage by putting on the kettle.

‘This the sort of job where I get to ask questions?’ he said while carrying two mugs into the bedroom. I could have pointed out that he was already doing so.

‘You can ask all the questions you like,’ I told him, ‘but I doubt I’ll be able to answer them. We’re just keeping an eye on someone. Watching pavements and waiting to see if he’s a waste of our time.’

He pulled a chair over and settled in with his tea. I was surprised at his appearance; I had been expecting a functional rock of old tweed and flannel but he was quite the dandy, in a three-piece suit and hat.

‘I’ve done my fair share of this sort of thing,’ he admitted. ‘You lot only call me in on the boring jobs.’ He took off his hat, a perfectly brushed, brown bowler, and sat it upturned in his lap as if he intended to eat nuts from it. ‘I suppose that’s only natural; you’re hardly going to go private with the juicy stuff.’

‘You’d be surprised how little of it is juicy,’ I told him. ‘It’s not the most exciting profession in the world.’

‘You want to try my line of work. Coma patients get more action.’

We agreed a rota that would see the house covered all day and he left me to it, promising to return at six. By then I had decided to attempt something new – you can only look at lace curtains for so many hours before deciding your plans need readjustment.

In those days my list of agents was negligible. Thankfully one of them was exactly what we needed in order to get things moving.

Cyril Luckwood was a strange little man. He worked for the post office, shuffling and sorting mail. An undemanding job that suited him. It gave him time to think and Cyril had always been a big thinker. Whenever I saw him he had stumbled on a new idea, from an innovative design for vacuum flasks to using bleach to run car motors. Nothing ever came of these ideas. For Cyril it was all about the dreaming. He was a man that liked to solve problems people might not be aware existed.

I met him in a little pub called the Midnight Sailor, further down Farringdon Road. It was the sort of pub where the carpet was on forty Woodbines a day and the tables felt like they contained hearts of sponge.

‘Now then, Jeremy,’ said Cyril as I joined him at a table he had taken in the far corner, ‘you know all the nicest places.’ To Cyril I was Jeremy; I’ve had so many names over the years.

‘How are you keeping?’ I asked him.

‘Can’t complain. Margery is barely talking to me but that’s hardly unusual. I think it’s the lino that’s got her wound up?’

‘The lino?’

‘In the kitchen. I cut a whopping great square out of it because I wanted to test its resistance to heat.’

‘Should I ask?’

‘Probably not. Just a thought I’d had. I might be on to something in the field of culinary insulation, not that this appeases her. Margery is not a woman who is interested in breaking new ground.’

‘But you are.’

‘Exactly.’ He took a sip of his pint and sighed. ‘Enough of my problems. What are you up to?’

‘Surveillance job.’

‘Obviously. Can I ask about him?’

‘You can ask… but if I knew anything I wouldn’t have needed to call you.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll be going in blind as usual.’

‘As usual.’

He shrugged and took another mouthful of his beer. ‘One day you’ll be the death of me.’

‘I do hope not.’

‘I know you do. Which is the reason I stick my neck out anyway. You ask for a lot, but you do it nicely.’

We finished our drinks and I walked him to Krishnin’s house, being careful to take the long way around, coming in from the top end of the street.

Inside our cuckoo’s nest, I led Cyril upstairs to O’Dale, who was sipping without enthusiasm at some soup he had brought in a flask.

‘I could tell you how to keep that hot for days,’ said Cyril, but O’Dale showed the idea as much interest as the soup.

‘One more pair of hands is it?’ he asked, looking at me. ‘One of your lot?’

‘I’m a freelancer,’ said Cyril with a smile, ‘like you, I presume?’

‘Not another private lad?’ O’Dale was clearly put out that I might have gone to another agency.

‘No, no,’ Cyril replied, ‘I work for the government. Just up the road in fact. Mount Pleasant Sorting Office.’

‘You work for the bloody post office?’

‘For ten proud years.’

O’Dale didn’t really know what to say to that so he returned to his soup and left the subject alone.

‘Cyril Luckwood,’ said Cyril, holding out his hand in greeting.