Guy Adams - The Clown Service

‘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— ’

a) Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, London, 20th December 1963

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.

I made myself a coffee, checked the tapes in case I’d missed anything (I hadn’t) and then began to run over my plan for the night’s mission. It being an embarrassingly simple plan, this occupied me for all of ten minutes. I was stir crazy by the time the clock slouched towards midnight.

It sounded as if the residents across the road had gone to bed. There was no indication that they had left the building. One of them had shuffled his flatulent way past a microphone earlier. I hoped they were settled in for the night.

I left the house with a small holdall carrying tools and a change of clothes for once I reached Shad Thames. A young man on his first covert mission.

b) Shad Thames, London, 20th December 1963

‘Look at you,’ said O’Dale once I’d pulled my balaclava into place. ‘Mole out of Wind in the Bloody Willows.’

‘If I’m as quiet and attentive as him, you’ll have no cause for complaint.’

‘This is a covert mission, not scrumping for apples.’

‘No need to worry about me,’ I insisted. ‘I’m capable of keeping my end up.’

‘You’d better be. With something like this, you’re only as strong as your back-up. You buckle and I’m up to my neck in it before you can say Borsht. Show me your gun.’

‘Erm…’ This was awkward. I hadn’t thought to sign one out. ‘I haven’t got one.’

O’Dale rolled his eyes and dug around in the pocket of his duffel coat. He pulled out a heavy ex-service revolver. ‘I came with a spare. Look after it – I brought that back from Egypt after the war.’

I held the thing in my hand. It weighed a ton.

‘Please tell me you’ve had some firearms training,’ he begged.

‘Of course I have.’ A rainy afternoon in a stately home in Kent, a bored instructor working his way through a magazine about cars while myself and two others hurled bullets ineffectually at a set of targets twenty feet away.

‘That’s something.’

We were bobbing along in a small row boat requisitioned – from the River Police. Given the location of the warehouse, if we wanted to avoid the front door, our only alternative was the river.

‘Hopefully,’ I said, ‘we won’t see a soul in there anyway. We can just get in, have a snoop around, plant a few recording devices and get back to our beds.’

‘Hopefully,’ O’Dale agreed. He sounded far from convinced.

We had pliers, bolt-cutters and the cover of darkness on our side as we worked along the short row of warehouses towards our destination.

There was a narrow jetty behind the warehouse and I tied our boat up before climbing out and joining O’Dale at the chained-up doors.

‘Give me the bolt-cutters,’ he whispered, having obviously decided that the manly business of cutting through chains was quite beyond me. I didn’t bother to argue.

I held the end of the chain as he cut, to stop it from falling to the jetty or clashing against the door, then slowly uncoiled it and put it to one side.

O’Dale tried the door. ‘Still locked.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ I said, pulling out a set of lock picks from my jacket pocket.

‘Seems you’re a little more prepared than I gave you credit for,’ he acknowledged.

‘Thank you.’ I didn’t enlighten him that I’d bought the set five years earlier when going through a phase of wanting to be Harry Houdini. I might not have fully mastered the arts of escapology but I was more than a match for the door lock.

I opened it and we stepped inside.

It was completely silent. So, either it was as empty as we had hoped, or Krishnin’s men were lying in wait for us. Either way, I decided we might as well turn on our torches.

The open space revealed was all but identical in size and shape to the warehouse I had investigated earlier. But this one was in use. Forty or so crates were stacked against one wall, a set of tables laid out in front of them where someone had stood to pack whatever the crates contained. In the centre of the room there was an operating table. It was rough and dirty, the sort of thing you imagined being knocked up in a war zone. Shining the torch onto its surface, I blenched at the sight of two lotion bowls, stained with dried blood, a pair of scalpels, a syringe and a couple of depressors congealing inside them. ‘Not the healthiest approach to surgery.’

‘Who says they were trying to heal?’ asked O’Dale, looking over my shoulder.

He popped open one of the crates. ‘Some sort of chemical,’ he said, lifting a small bottle out. He unscrewed the cap and took a sniff, the scent making him flinch. ‘No idea what. Alcohol base of some kind but beyond that…’ He screwed the cap back on and slipped the bottle into his pocket.