Guy Adams - The Clown Service

I headed back towards King’s Cross.

b) 58 Sampson Court, King’s Cross

It took Gavrill some time to answer his door. This didn’t surprise me. I had no doubt his tardiness had little to do with his old age.

‘Yes?’ he asked, looking at me as if he didn’t recognise me, a calculated and admirable impression of a vague old man, fearful of what a knock on the door might bring.

‘We met yesterday morning,’ I told him. ‘I was in the company of August Shining. You remember, I’m sure?’

‘August?’ He pretended he was trying to remember.

‘Give it a rest,’ I said, pushing my way past him and stepping inside his flat. ‘You know exactly who I am. You took over the Russian department for…’ I realised I had no idea what the counterpart to Section 37 had been called, ‘preternatural affairs? I’m sure you lot would have given it a much more longwinded title. Doesn’t matter. You took over some time after Olag Krishnin’s death in the ’60s.’

‘I’m not sure I…’

‘Shut up, I haven’t time. The thing is: you knew Krishnin, didn’t you?’

I continued moving through the flat, wanting to make sure we were alone. Gavrill took that opportunity to make a break for it. I wasn’t worried. Oh, I swore like a trooper as I dashed out onto the balcony after him, but the day a seventy-year-old man manages to give me the slip I’ll accept any harsh criticism my superiors offer and retire.

I caught up with him on the stairwell, offering as reassuring a smile as I could to a woman peering at us through the window to her apartment.

‘Come on, Dad,’ I said at some volume, ‘you don’t want to cause a scene, do you? You’ll only embarrass yourself.’

He sighed and gave a nod. ‘Fine, we’ll talk. I don’t want any more trouble.’

I led him back to the open door of his flat, pushed him inside and closed and locked the door behind us.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’m an old man; all of that is a long time ago. Ask Shining – he knows. I’m retired. I’m a UK citizen now, and I don’t want to go raking all that up.’

‘You mean you don’t want your comfy lifestyle threatened by past crimes?’

‘Crimes? I committed no crimes. You know. This work we do – it’s above all that. We do what our country tells us; we’re tools not ideologists.’

‘You’re clearly not, or you wouldn’t have moved here. Or are you still working for your old employers?’

He sighed and settled down into a ratty-looking armchair, gesturing for me to do the same. ‘My old employers? Who are they? My country is gone. Russia is a new world, full of businessmen and crooks. Who can tell the difference? In the ’80s we stood against your Thatcher and Reagan, said we had principles. Bullshit. We’ve become the same. I don’t care. Like I say, I was never an ideologist. Life is more comfortable here.’

‘I’m glad you like it. So tell me about Krishnin.’

‘He was a monster. Mad. We disowned him even before he was shot.’

‘What about Operation Black Earth? Was that a state-backed operation?’

He looked at me in genuine discomfort. ‘You know about that?’

‘Not as much as I’d like. Why do you think I’m here?’

He rubbed his face with his hands. Whether this was an attempt to prevaricate or because he found the subject hard to discuss was neither here nor there. I didn’t care how difficult he found it. He was going to tell me everything he knew.

‘We need a drink,’ he said.

‘This isn’t a social visit.’

‘I don’t care. I need one if I’m going to talk about this. I would suggest you need one if you’re going to hear it, but that’s up to you.’

I reluctantly agreed – anything to get the old Russian’s mouth working. Of course, I needn’t have worried on that score: like all these old buggers, once he started talking I thought he’d never stop.

April Shining got out of her taxi, paid the fare to the penny (she considered having to listen to the driver’s loathsome views on racial immigration more than sufficient by way of a tip) and made her way down Morrison Close.

At the far end stood number thirteen, looking out on this dull bit of South London with dirty, apathetic windows. The small front garden was an unruly cultivation of grasses boxed in by privet. The front gate seemed determined not to let her in but she’d got past better security in her time. April Shining prided herself that there was not a building in the land that could keep her out if she was on form. She had once dropped in on Tony Blair to give him a piece of her mind and ended up staying for a distinctly awkward afternoon tea. If you were forced to describe her in one word you would likely fall back on ‘indomitable’ but you would consider ‘terrifying’, ‘incorrigible’ and ‘dangerous’ first.

Unlike her brother, April hadn’t followed a linear path through the Civil Service. She had flitted from one department to another, from the foreign office to a brief position in the Cabinet. She had dallied in various offices, embassies and battlefields during a long and amusing life. She had retired into a small flat in Chiswick with nothing but a state pension and an irascible cat to while away her dotage. This had been in character, revealing what little value she placed on social progression, how uninterested she was in encumbering herself with possessions.

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.