Clown Town полностью

It hadn’t felt like it at the time. At the time he just did what needed doing, and when it was over he carried on with life, which wasn’t the life those around him thought he lived. This was the nature of covert operations. He walked a road no one had the slightest wee notion was there, and everyone was scared of him—of course they were—but they hadn’t a baldy who he really was; didn’t know the secret of how to be him. Which was this simple—listen—it was this simple: All he needed was to know he had no limits. That was all. It wasn’t the killing, it was the not caring afterwards. It was going home and sleeping dreamlessly and letting nothing put him off breakfast. And then heading out into the world, knowing men would do anything to avoid his eye, and women leave the room rather than be alone with him. Though that happened too, of course. The more they didn’t want it to, the more he made sure it did.

For years he’d lived this way, and now it was over—the secret hours done and dusted—he lived a charmed life, because once you were part of the covert world it had to keep you safe. That was the sacred bargain he’d made. Betray everything, and we’ll take care of you. The joke was, he’d never betrayed a thing—for that, you had to feel loyalty. But they’d kept him safe, because that was their job; hid him away in the north of England with all the leeway in the world. There was food and drink on the table, and money for girls when the urge overtook him; there were distant trains to mark the passing hours, and owls at night he could hear doing his job, snatching up the weak and frightened. There was a rhythm to it that would go on forever; round and round, round and round, and nothing goes round like a wheel; the night-time noises the same as always—the pitch and yaw of the gathering dark. Tonight, like most nights, he’d fallen asleep drunk in his favourite chair. Tonight, like no other, he’d come round to the smell of the tyre: rubber, dog shit, blood and feathers.

You always think this can’t be happening, and you keep right on thinking that until it does.

“Any final observations?”

The last words Stephen Regan and Bernard Docherty had heard.

He’d tried to move his head, but couldn’t; it was wedged between the rubber and the road. His arms and legs were bound, and there was someone sitting on him, holding him in place, the one exact person that could never be doing this, and that was the clue, the get-out clause, because that was the detail that proved this a dream. He was asleep in his chair, and when he woke he’d wipe sweat from his eyes and pour another drink. He could taste it now, its smoky absolution. He’d light another cigarette, and let the match burn down to his thumb, and the bright sharp pain would prove him awake, and this would be over.

It was the same old story: round and round.

He kept right on thinking it wasn’t happening, and then it did.

What you see when you see a blank page is much what you hear when you hear white noise; it’s the early shifting into gear of something not ready to happen—an echo of what you feel when you walk past sights the eyes are blind to: bus queues, whitewashed shopfronts, adverts pasted to lamp-posts, or a four-storey block on Aldersgate Street in the London borough of Finsbury, where the premises gracing the pavement include a Chinese restaurant with ever-lowered shutters and a faded menu taped to its window; a down-at-heel newsagent’s where pallets of off-brand cola cans block the aisle; and, between the two, a weathered black door with a dusty milk bottle welded to its step, and an air of neglect suggesting that it never opens, never closes. Should anyone look up, they’d see the legend w. w. henderson, solicitor and commissioner for oaths lettered in gilt on a window; might notice, too, the way the establishments comprising this block are distinguished by the varying discoloration of their façades, like the spines of books on disregarded shelves. But books, unlike spies, can’t be judged by their covers, and there’s no call for the busy pedestrian to pass sentence on this cluster of properties, which sits in one of those marginal spaces cities collect, then dump on disregarded streets or in corners never seen in daylight. London teems with them. In each of its boroughs you’ll pass such buildings, resisting examination; squat—windowless—drab—and walking by them is like remembering a rainy Sunday from the seventies, triggering something that’s almost boredom, almost pain, but never quite either.