The Clown Service Read Online Free Page B

of his coffee and fixed Toby with a penetrating stare. ‘Are you washed-up?’ he asked. ‘Do you deserve to be hidden away out here?’
    Toby didn’t feel annoyed by the question, something that would surprise him when he thought back on it. ‘Depends where “here” is,’ he replied, ‘and what I’m expected to do.’
    ‘A sensible, if evasive answer. Section 37 is an anomaly within the Service. A borderless agency that nobody can quite decide who runs. Are we part of the SIS or the Security Service? Neither, even if pressed, will admit to us. The ugly date brought home after a drunken night out. For all that, you’re expected tofight and, if necessary, die protecting your country. Does that sound unreasonable?’
    ‘Yes, but I’d probably do it if I had to.’
    Shining smiled. ‘Good lad! Maybe we’ll be able to show them there’s life in Ludwig yet, eh?’
    ‘Do you have to call me that?’
    ‘No,’ Shining smiled, ‘but I probably will anyway. Never run away from the labels they give you. Wear them with pride and rob them of their sting.’
    ‘You’d need that philosophy,’ said Toby without thinking, ‘being called August Shining.’
    Instead of being angered his new Section Chief laughed and nodded. ‘It’s not as florid as it sounds. I was born in August, and my parents were too busy to think of something better.’
    ‘Sounds familiar,’ Toby admitted, then immediately changed the subject for fear of getting onto the subject of his father. ‘So what exactly is it we do here?’
    ‘They didn’t tell you?’ Shining finished his coffee. ‘No. I imagine they wouldn’t. We’re the smallest department in the Secret Service, and exist purely by force of determination and my pig-headedness. We are charged with protecting the country or its interests from preternatural terrorism.’
    Toby had to think about that. The words simply hadn’t made sense so he assumed he had heard them incorrectly. He repeated them out loud. ‘Preternatural terrorism?’
    ‘Absolutely. You’ve got a lot to learn.’
    The sound in Toby’s head returned, that white noise of confusion that had assailed him when he was out on the street. It was the sound of a mind folding under the weight of things it simply didn’t want to process.
    ‘Do you believe in the paranormal?’ Shining asked. Toby simply stared at him, desperately wishing he had misunderstood the question, the word, the concept.
    ‘No,’ he responded, aware that the tone of his voice suggested he thought the answer obvious.
    He needn’t have worried about giving offence. Shining merely smiled. It was a soft, indulgent smile, the sort you’d offer to a child who has just expressed disbelief that men ever walked on the moon. ‘You will,’ he said, ‘unless you’re foolhardy.’ He winked. ‘And I don’t think you are.’
    There was the beep of a phone and Shining ferreted in his pocket. Swiping at the screen of his phone he peered through his glasses at the text message and gave a quiet chuckle. ‘And maybe this will help us decide one way or the other,’ he said.
    He wandered out of the room only to reappear shrugging on a long overcoat. ‘Come on then,’ he said, ‘let’s begin your education.’
d) Piccadilly Line, Southbound for King’s Cross, London
    They were underneath the city and Shining was still saying things Toby wasn’t sure he wanted to hear.
    ‘Of course,’ he said. His lips were close to Toby’s ear so he could be heard over the noisy line, like a devil perched on his shoulder whispering confidences. ‘In the ’60s everybody had a section like ours. Those were the days! Budgets as over-inflated as the nation’s paranoia. There was nothing in which we couldn’t believe.
    ‘I was brought on straight out of Cambridge,’ Shining continued, ‘selected because of a frankly awful thesis about thephilosophical implications of time travel.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘You could write about any old twaddle then and some fool