Clown Town полностью

Actually, thought Ash—speaking from experience, plus a lifetime spent online—what boys were interested in, what men were after, was the same two things, one being blow jobs and the other an audience, to fill the time between blow jobs. If she really wanted to send her mother grandchildless to the grave, delivering that information would get the job done without Ash leaving her chair. She’d as soon learn that Ash never went on a first date without packing a three-inch screwdriver, just in case.

Leaving her chair wouldn’t be happening soon, either. The paper wasn’t just to make the office look like a medieval crime scene, it was research material, the top half inch being a list of night schools, a phrase used here in its loosest possible sense. From colleges of further education through private tutorial services to voluntarily-run classes in rooms over garages, what these places had in common was that all offered courses—some leading to certificates recognised by national education bodies; others just providing a grounding in practical knowledge—in basic electronics, or chemistry, or—and here we were back in Slough House, and one of those team meetings in which Jackson Lamb dispensed his earthly wisdom—“your general basic lesson in how to build a bomb.”

“Seriously?”

“What, you think people make bombs without learning how first? Like it’s bungee jumping, or writing a novel?”

She didn’t think that. She just didn’t suppose bomb-making was a night-school course.

After the half inch of alternative educational outlets came seven and a half further inches: more lists, often incomplete, of pupils attending these courses, along with basic identifiers—addresses, NI numbers; where pertinent, criminal records.

“And I’m supposed to what, find you some trainee terrorists?”

“Best-case scenario, yeah. But worst case, you’ll bore your tits off and go find some other line of work. So that’s a win-win.”

She had looked around. Louisa was nearest. “Did he just objectify me?”

“Wasn’t listening. But probably, yeah.”

The pile of paper had grown no thinner since that conversation. Ash still wasn’t sure how many names it contained, but had a shrewd idea of how long it would take to verify the intentions of all concerned. A nillion years, this being her childhood quantification of, basically, eternity.

Meanwhile, her mother was reaching her showstopper—the part where she told Ash she didn’t want to interfere—and Ash responded, as she mostly did, by refraining from asking her, if she ever did want to interfere, to make sure she let Ash know in advance, because short of her turning up in a tank it was unlikely Ash would notice a difference.

“I only hope this has been of some use to you, Ashley.”

“So do I, Mum.”

“You’ll thank me one day.”

Roll on, thought Ash.

She put her phone down. The task in front of her hadn’t gone anywhere; the office still smelled beige. Nominally she shared with River Cartwright, but he had yet to return from his long-distance skive, as Shirley put it, so it had been Ash’s alone since her arrival. A small mercy buried within the bigger punishment. But it meant the smell, the damp, the creaking noises in the corners were also hers alone. For a while she sat with her face buried in her hands, her mind playing out various alternative futures. Then she sat up straight, brushed her hair from her eyes, checked her phone, and carried on doing nothing.

Works have recently been completed on Aldersgate Street. The digging up of pavements is done, the re-laying of slabs complete, and if the end result is that the walkways are a little more crooked—a little less safe—this is one more argument for leaving things as they are for fear of making them worse. But while this is a lesson the slow horses might be wise to heed, if they were wise they would not be slow horses, and even those whose windows look down on the recently patched pavements—and who have spent hours moaning about the workers’ noise—now gaze down at the sight of pedestrians tripping on unaligned edges without reaching that conclusion. And this, perhaps, is another lesson: that those very things which ought to be plain and obvious are often among those most difficult to read. But perhaps this depends on the reader.

For now, though, the only reading being done is the slow, excruciatingly dull assessment of columns of figures and lists of names, of spreadsheets teeming with cells and sparklines, of ancient files in prehistoric formats, that previous readers—long since dust themselves—have amended and footnoted with marginal squiggles in ink that time has turned purple. If there are stories here, they’re crying out not to be told; would much rather go the way of lost myths, and be allowed to perish silently on pages that remain uncut. But things leak out regardless. Old legends are exhumed, to test their durability against the modern world. This does not always result in a happy ending.