The Clown Service Read online

  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.

  O’Dale looked at me again and I shrugged, reassuring: ‘You can trust Cyril.’

  ‘He officially vetted?’

  ‘Don’t be a prig,’ I told him. I hated it when agents tried to vie over each other in a nonexistent pecking order. ‘Cyril’s fine.’

  ‘O’Dale,’ the detective said, returning Cyril’s offered handshake.

  ‘Pleased to meet you. Do much of this sort of thing?’

  ‘A fair bit.’

  ‘Gets you out of the house, doesn’t it?’ Cyril turned back to me. ‘When do you want me to go in?’

  ‘As soon as we can get you kitted up,’ I told him. ‘There’s no point in hanging around longer than we have to.’

  ‘You’re sending him in there?’ said O’Dale, clearly not impressed with the idea.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ Cyril assured him, ‘I have a rather special skill when it comes to infiltration.’

  ‘You’re familiar with the concept of “going grey”?’ I asked O’Dale. ‘Making yourself blend into the background, to avoid being spotted by the people you’re observing? Of course you must be in your job …’

  ‘I tend to find people walk around with their eyes closed,’ O’Dale admitted. ‘It’s surprisingly easy to avoid being noticed.’

  ‘Well, in our trade it’s a little more difficult, as you tend to be expecting surveillance. In Cyril’s case, he has an advantage.’

  ‘Who’s Cyril?’

  ‘The man you’ve just been talking to.’

  O’Dale shifted uncomfortably in his seat and I couldn’t help but smile at this proof of Cyril’s abilities. ‘I wasn’t talking …’ He looked around. ‘Hang on … there was … something about Mount Pleasant.’

  ‘Mount Pleasant Sorting Office,’ said Cyril, stepping back into O’Dale’s eyeline and therefore his attention. ‘It’s where I work. During the day at least …’

  O’Dale’s confusion was a delight to watch.

  ‘Cyril has a natural aptitude for going grey.’

  ‘Nobody wants to be beneath people’s attention,’ said Cyril, ‘but at least I put it to good use.’

  ‘What I couldn’t do with an ability like that …’ said O’Dale.

  Cyril shrugged. ‘Depends how you feel about reminding your wife who you are every morning. Not that she’s slow in deciding how she feels about me once she’s remembered …’

  ‘So you’re just going to walk in there?’ asked O’Dale.

  ‘And plant these,’ I said, holding up a selection of microphones and transmitters. If all went well we’d have the whole place wired up by the time Cyril had finished.

  Cyril packed the equipment into a large satchel (‘discreet recording equipment’ was anything but in those days) and pulled a balaclava over his head. ‘The less they have to focus on, the better,’ he explained.

  He walked downstairs and I wished him luck at the front door.

  I climbed back upstairs and moved to the bedroom window where I could watch Cyril cross the road and walk up to the front door of Krishnin’s house.

  ‘He’s actually going to knock on the front door?’ asked O’Dale.

  Cyril did just that before stepping to one side. After a moment, Krishnin opened the door and I got my first good look at him in the flesh. The blandness he had conveyed on the film footage was less in evidence here. Some people wear their distinctiveness deep beneath the skin. It’s only when you really pay attention that you catch something in their eyes, the set of their mouth, the way they carry themselves. Krishnin was a spy to his core: an interesting man buried deep inside a boring one.

  He stepped out of the doorway, moving along the short path to the street, looking up and down to see if he could catch sight of whoever had knocked. The moment he had cleared the door, Cyril stepped inside and vanished from sight.

  ‘That’s our boy is it?’ asked O’Dale, pointing out of the window at Krishnin.

  ‘It is indeed.’

  ‘Doesn’t look much.’ He rubbed his hands on the shiny legs of his slacks, no doubt missing being able to punch things now he was a civilian.

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ I replied. ‘He strikes me as a man who would surprise you.’

  O’Dale scoffed. ‘That’s what you lot always think. We’d have an end to the bloody Russians if everybody stopped staring through binoculars and scribbling on foolscap, and pulled a trigger once in a while.’

  ‘I’ve never shot anyone in my life,’ I told him. ‘I hope I never have to.’

  I had made the ultimate admission of worthlessness to O’Dale, who sighed and returned to the newspaper he’d been reading. I felt no need to defend myself. I didn’t think killing was something to take pride in.

  I occupied myself with setting up the receiver and recording equipment. At a flick of the switch, the awkward silence had been replaced with the sound of Russian conversation.

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t have any listening devices set up?’ remarked O’Dale, folding his paper and leaning forward in his chair to listen. He sighed, rubbing at his temples. ‘Hang on … oh yes, that little man took them in with him.’ He looked up at me. ‘How do you work with him? He’s so easy to forget.’

  ‘I think I’ve built up some kind of receptiveness,’ I admitt
ed. ‘I know him so well now that I can always hold his presence in mind. Isn’t that always the way? Once you’ve really noticed something you see it all the time?’

  ‘Like red cars.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You notice there are a lot of red cars on the roads, then you can’t stop seeing them. Everywhere you look, red cars.’

  ‘Yes, selective attention. The brain is assaulted with information all the time. Once it decides to fixate on one particular thing it seems to find it everywhere. It’s the same root cause as coincidence: you don’t notice how many times coincidences don’t happen, just when they do.’

  I was listening to the Russian conversation. Krishnin was sharing the house with at least one other man.

  ‘We need to find out who that is,’ I said to O’Dale. ‘If you get the chance to photograph him going in or out, we can try to pin him down.’

  ‘I know my job, lad,’ O’Dale replied. ‘My Russian may be a bit rusty, but it’s serviceable. Though I may miss the finer detail.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I can review the recordings. At the moment they’re just talking about who was at the door. The man we don’t know is of the opinion it’s local kids playing, Krishnin is too paranoid to believe it.’

  ‘Sensible. No spy worth his salt would be that easy to fool.’

  ‘As long as he doesn’t notice Cyril we’ll be fine.’

  ‘But if they end up looking right at him …’

  ‘He has to avoid their eyeline. I tell you it’s fine – he knows his job.’

  ‘You wouldn’t catch me risking it.’

  The conversation was quiet and it was hard to pick up everything. Wherever Cyril had left the microphone it was too far away from the men to provide perfect coverage. That was par for the course and acceptable: Cyril was a compromise who was never going to be able to match the placement and precision of an advance team working an empty house.

  The main thrust of the conversation concerned another base of operations at a warehouse. I made a few notes about it, trying to narrow down its location. I didn’t have a great deal to go on: it was on the river, not overlooked, central enough to be practical but hidden enough to be private. Finally, the stranger made reference to Gainsford Street. That suggested Shad Thames. Cyril had changed the game in our favour.

  He should have been back with us by now. It was possible he would have to wait before leaving, picking the optimum moment when he could walk out without drawing attention to himself. But the longer he was there, the greater the chance of being exposed.

  ‘If he’s not back in ten minutes, we may need to set up a distraction,’ I said. ‘Buy him enough cover to be able to slip out.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘Nothing at the moment,’ I confessed, moving back over to the window. ‘If all else fails, one of us will have to go and knock on the door.’

  ‘Compromising our cover. Fat lot of good either of us will be for surveillance once we’ve drawn attention to ourselves.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s not necessary.’

  Suddenly the voices on the radio had become raised. The stranger shouting, the sound of a chair spilling over.

  ‘What’s happening?’ O’Dale asked, jumping to his feet.

  ‘He says he saw someone,’ I replied, waving at him to be quiet so I could pay attention.

  Everything went silent. I could hear the faint sounds of footsteps, presumably the two Russians on the move, checking the house.

  ‘We’ve got to get over there,’ I decided. ‘To hell with the cover.’

  ‘Think about it,’ O’Dale said, grabbing my arm. ‘We need to continue surveillance. If both of us go storming over there, we’re blown.’

  ‘If they snatch Cyril, it’s blown anyway.’

  ‘No. He’s blown. Not us. You need to think of the bigger picture.’

  I was only too aware that I was having my job dictated to me by the hired help, but I was panicking.

  ‘They’ll kill him,’ I said, more to convince myself than O’Dale.

  ‘If they’re up to something serious they could end up killing many others. The only way we’ll find out is if we keep our cool and continue surveillance …’

  ‘He’s right,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned to see Cyril standing in the doorway. ‘Besides, whoever it was that’s set them panicking, it wasn’t me. I’m far too good at my job for that.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘What was meant to. I went in, kept to the shadows and avoided any direct contact. Our man is talking to another Russian, a stunted bear of a man, if you’ll forgive the cliché. They were both far too immersed in their own business to take any notice of me. I didn’t risk going upstairs. Old houses are noisy; couldn’t risk any creaking floorboards. There’s a bug in the hallway, the kitchen and just inside the main sitting room. I couldn’t go too far in without risking entering their line of sight, but it should pick up what they’re saying.’

  ‘We’ve got them loud and clear,’ I confirmed.

  ‘I left via the back door,’ Cyril continued. ‘They’ve chosen the place well – the back yard is surrounded by high walls.’ He fingered a hole in the knee of the left leg of his trousers. ‘As you can guess by the state of me after managing to climb over them.’

  ‘Stuff the walls,’ cut in O’Dale, anxious to get back to the point. ‘Who was it that they went chasing after if it wasn’t you?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you.’ Cyril shrugged. ‘Maybe if you listened to them rather than me?’

  I turned up the volume on the transmitter. Krishnin and friend had returned to the main room, their voices picked up once more by the bug Cyril had left. They were not alone.

  ‘Another Russian?’ asked O’Dale.

  ‘Makes no sense,’ said Cyril. ‘Why would they be spying on their own?’

  The latest Russian’s voice raged loud until a solid slap brought a sudden quiet. That moment of peace held, then Krishnin started talking. I translated. They were uncomfortable words, words that hurt in my mouth as if I were chewing stones.

  ‘He’s asking him how much he heard, who he’s working with, if there’s anyone else with him …’

  There was a scream, a response to a physical attack we could only imagine. All three of us flinched.

  Then came the rattle of metal against metal and a crash as something – I pictured a drawer of cutlery – was dropped on the table.

  ‘Sounds like they plan on getting creative,’ said O’Dale, getting to his feet. ‘If it’s all the same to you two, I’m going to clock off. I don’t need to listen to a man being tortured, I’m more a Light Programme sort of chap.’

  ‘I’ll be going too,’ said Cyril, ‘unless you need me to do anything else?’

  I shook my head. ‘You’ve done all we need for now, thank you.’ I patted him on the shoulder and turned to O’Dale. ‘I’ll see you in a few hours.’

  He nodded and both men made their way out of the room, leaving me to the sound of metal on flesh.

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

  Morning found me jaded and brittle. Listening to the sound of a man being slowly tortured to death was my real introduction to the dirty business of espionage. Intelligence work includes being able to witness horror in the hope that what you learn makes you stronger. It is not a noble business, but almost certainly a necessary one.

  When O’Dale reappeared he brought a brown paper bag and two steaming cups of takeaway tea.

  ‘I didn’t know how you took yours,’ he said, ‘so I told them to throw everything at it.’

  The bag delivered a pair of bacon and mushroom rolls, impossibly perfect and indescribably delicious.

  ‘How’s our friend?’ O’Dale asked.

  ‘Krishnin’s colleague took a dead body away a couple of hours ago.’

  O’Dale acknowledged that with a nod, then left the subject alone. ‘You learn anything of interest?’

  ‘Krishnin�
��s definitely active over here – he refers to an operation codenamed “Black Earth”.’

  ‘Sounds charming.’

  ‘Sounds lethal. I’ll need to report in.’

  ‘Fill your boots, I’ve got it covered for the next few hours.’

  Leaving O’Dale in charge, I stepped out of the house. The fresh air completed the work of the tea and sandwich; I was almost human by the time I reached Soho.

  The Colonel was not in the best of moods. There was a flap on somewhere else and it was difficult to secure even a fraction of his attention.

  ‘Black Earth?’ he asked. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I’m hoping I’ll be able to find out.’

  ‘You sure you understood him correctly?’

  ‘My Russian’s excellent. That’s what he said.’

  The Colonel stepped over to the door of his office and began shouting along the corridor, demanding the file of someone under the codename of ‘Otter’.

  ‘And you say we’ve got a dead body dumped somewhere?’

  ‘Yes. I’d have followed him to find out where, but I didn’t want to leave the post unmanned.’

  ‘Someone’s going to get a surprise when they take the bins out. Oh well, at least the night’s not a total failure …’

  ‘I need to look into the warehouse,’ I said, hoping to get the conversation back on track.

  He nodded.

  Maggie appeared in the doorway. ‘Otter’s file. You need anything else?’

  ‘Aspirin and coffee. For God’s sake put your back into it this time. I swear the last cup tasted of nothing more than the china it was poured into.’

  She sighed and walked off, not gracing him with a reply.

  After leafing through the file, he looked up at me.

  ‘Off you go then,’ he said. ‘Give the warehouse a once-over.’

  ‘I could do with a few more hands,’ I ventured. ‘I can’t run a surveillance operation and go wandering around the docks for the day. A couple more men would make all the difference.’

  ‘Can’t spare them,’ the Colonel said. ‘You’ll have to manage. Bring me something more concrete and I’ll see what I can do.’