Guy Adams - The Clown Service

He looked at my phone. ‘Where’s the boss?’

‘Busy.’ I had no idea how much I should trust anyone at this stage and I wasn’t about to blurt out everything that had happened.

He nodded. ‘Isn’t he always? I can’t put it on that without jailbreaking it.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Just do it.’

‘Fine. And I’ll only charge you thirty quid, company discount as it were.’

Cheeky bastard.

‘Whatever. Can you do it straightaway?’

‘Yeah, but it’ll still take me a while.’

I thought about it. The idea of leaving my phone with him wasn’t comfortable but if Shining had trusted him then I supposed I should do the same. I needed that app.

‘OK, I’ll be upstairs. How long do you need?’

‘Come back in an hour, forty-five minutes – if you’re lucky.’

I left the phone on his desk and walked around the corner to the office entrance. Which is when I realised that I hadn’t been given a set of keys.

I didn’t have it in me to be angry anymore; I just pressed Tamar’s bell and steeled myself for an argument.

Eventually she appeared, this time she was at least properly clothed, in a pair of jeans and a crop top with ‘Superstar’ encrusted on it in gold sequins.

‘Remember me?’ I asked, ‘August’s friend.’

‘And I know you’re his friend because?’

‘Because I really am. In fact, I work with him.’

‘That doesn’t make you friend,’ she replied. ‘The men I “work with” – they are certainly not friends.’

‘Please let me in.’

‘Why you not call him?’

‘Because he’s not in.’

‘Where is he?’

‘I…’ I was spent by this point, frustrated and tired now the anger and panic had left me. ‘I don’t know. I need to try to find him. He’s in trouble and he needs me to help him.’

She looked at me and, after a moment, her entire mood softened. She reached out, took my hand and pulled me inside, shutting the door behind us.

‘I have a spare key for the office,’ she said, leading me up the stairs as if I was a child, ‘and I will help how I can. August is very dear.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I suppose he is.’

‘Well,’ said a voice from the landing above us, ‘I suppose that’s one word for him.’

And that was how I first met April Shining.

‘Might I suggest we let the poor boy sit down?’ April said, shooing me into the office ahead of both herself and Tamar.

‘I’m all right,’ I tried to say, but there is nothing as dominant as an April Shining in full flow. She’s a hostile weather front in a cardigan and beads.

‘Nonsense, it’s obviously all gone horrendously tits up and you need to take stock, bring us up to speed and then we can get on with getting things back on an even keel.’

Somehow, without planning it, I found myself seated behind the desk.

‘Get the kettle on, darling,’ April encouraged Tamar. ‘I dare say we’d all appreciate something warming and, as my brother never had the common sense to stock a reasonable supply of medicinal alcohol, we’ll have to make do with tea.’

Tamar didn’t argue. Like me, I’m not sure she quite knew how.

‘Look,’ I began, ‘this is all very kind, but I haven’t really got time for socialising. I’m afraid I have a lot of work to do.’

‘Naturally,’ April replied, ‘which is precisely why I said you should bring us up to speed.’

This was a step too far.

‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss anything,’ I insisted. ‘Your brother and I—’

‘Are the nation’s last great hope for survival against the forces of darkness,’ she said, collapsing onto the sofa in an eruption of patchouli scent. ‘It’s terribly exciting, and Tamar and I know all about it.’

‘I doubt that…’

‘Oh, my sweet little man, don’t imagine there’s a thing August doesn’t tell his two Valkyries. We are his rock, his last line of defence, his—’

‘Shocking breach of national security?’

‘Poo to that! You men and your secrets.’

‘Secrets are important. Even if you’re cleared to know what your brother does for a living, I can’t believe that he would give you any real information about it.’

‘Perhaps he just knew whom to trust?’

‘Apparently everyone in the Greater London area,’ I replied.

‘Oh hush now, my brother’s not an idiot – which you must have realised, however briefly you may have worked with him. The work you do here is unconventional on every level, so if you want to get anywhere, you have to go about it in an unconventional manner.’

I shrugged. I had hardly spent the morning behaving in an exemplary fashion and Shining’s lack of security protocol seemed my least important problem.

‘Besides,’ April continued, ‘you don’t really have the first idea who I am and what I do in the government. One doesn’t like to flash one’s credentials around – it’s vulgar and boring – but August isn’t the only Shining sibling to have ended up working behind the scenes on national business.’

‘And I am his bodyguard,’ announced Tamar as she returned with three mugs, one of which she dumped in front of me somewhat aggressively. ‘Head of security.’

‘Right.’ I had no idea what else to say. I had spent the last couple of days being surrounded by absurdity. Sooner or later you have to look to the bigger picture and let the little things go.

I told them what Shining and I had been doing and what had happened. If that was a mistake then, to hell with it, just one more my life was littered with. I was going to need all the help I could get to pull off a successful operation in the next forty-eight hours. When you no longer have a viable career to worry about, it’s amazing how quickly you home in on the important parts of the job. I began to understood why Shining had become the man he was.

When I had finished talking, I made my way over to the filing cabinets and began to search for old files that might be pertinent to Krishnin.

‘Oh August,’ April said, ‘you finally get a nice young man to help you with the creepy stuff and then you go and get yourself kidnapped or killed.’

‘Not killed,’ I said, ‘at least not yet. Krishnin will want to know how much we know; that’s the only reason he could have for kidnapping August. Standard protocol – take an officer, interrogate them, ascertain how far your operation is compromised.’

‘“Interrogate them”,’ repeated Tamar. ‘That not good, not in this work. He will be hurting August.’

‘My brother is made of stronger stuff than people give him credit for,’ said April, ‘and we won’t help him by sitting here fretting. Eyes forward, my petal. Let us concentrate on the mission in hand.’

‘There’s nothing here older than a couple of years,’ I said, slamming the filing cabinet shut.

‘Of course not,’ said April. ‘Section 37 hasn’t been sat on its bottom for the last fifty years you know. August’s old case files are safely hidden away. You leave that part to me. Whatever reports he filed I can dig out.’

Something occurred to me. ‘From what he told me, the night that he and O’Dale visited the warehouse they found a sample of some form of chemical. I don’t suppose O’Dale…’

‘Long dead, darling. Drank himself to death at the arse-end of the ’70s. If they did bring any evidence out though, I’m sure I can find it. A report on its contents anyway.’

‘An original sample would be too much to hope for after all this time, I suppose, though I feel we’d have a much greater chance of analysing it now than they did back then.’

‘I’ll see what I can find, but yes, I can’t imagine there’ll be anything but paper for us to work on.’