Clown Town полностью

Sentence me to life, thought Lech Wicinski. Or sentence me to death. But not to this halfway state, neither one thing nor the other . . .

Sunshine was falling on Aldersgate Street, and London was boasting its version of summer, with traffic noises for birdsong and brickwork for grassy meadow, though at least the digging up of nearby pavements to no discernible purpose was over. Inside, however, Slough House remained the dark side of Narnia: always winter, never Christmas. There was nothing to celebrate in Lech’s workload, either. The task to which he was currently assigned—and currently had a swirling momentum to it, an actual tidal force; currently meant he’d been doing it for as long as he could remember—was one he’d inherited from River Cartwright, when River had been Novichoked just this side of death. The safe house folder. What Lech was doing was cross-checking electoral rolls and census results against council tax bills and utility usage, in an attempt to determine whether supposedly occupied properties were in fact standing empty, potential hideaways for bad actors. A task to which River had applied himself with all the vigour he’d displayed while lying in a coma.

Which—lying in a coma—was about the only thing that hadn’t happened to Lech lately. Two years’ bad luck had snatched away the life he’d planned and left his face looking like someone had played noughts and crosses on the same grid, repeatedly. Instead of living with his fiancée and looking forward to tomorrow, he was alone in a rented flat that swallowed most of his salary, and setting off each morning to Slough House. So maybe he should quit before he was any more behind, and find a new life to pursue. But his face might as well have gone ten rounds with a sewing machine, and the only reference he could expect from the Service would be one hinting at dodgy online activities—lies, but they struck deep, and no employer would look at him twice. There was a way out of all of this. He simply hadn’t found it yet. Meanwhile, he’d been staring at the same screen for thirteen minutes, and when he tried to scroll down discovered it had frozen, and wouldn’t let him leave. This might have been some kind of metaphor, but was more likely just fucked-up IT. Welcome to Slough House, he thought, and left Louisa’s office, which he’d colonised to avoid Roddy Ho, and went to boil the kettle instead.

Second paragraph in, the story turned nasty.

Derek Flint, who but for the grace of God and the good sense of the electorate might have been sitting in the London Mayor’s office today, is rumoured to be under investigation by the Met. The Diary understands that irregularities in Flint’s election funding are the cause of this inconvenience.

Flint’s mentor, guru and éminence noir is, of course, Peter Judd, for whom accounting irregularities are hardly a novelty. Since the failure of his pet pol at the polls, Judd has been keeping a low profile. Long may it continue.

Okay, not as nasty as Judd deserved, but still.

Diana Taverner binned the newspaper. Whoever was doing her lackeying—turnover was high—would retrieve it for recycling in due course; meanwhile, she’d enjoy Judd’s failure for a moment, even if the bigger picture, the one in which he had her in a stranglehold, remained undimmed. Judd might no longer occupy a great office of state, and even he had presumably come to accept that he never would again, but his unwavering belief in his innate superiority would doubtless be unstymied by this latest setback. Despite—or perhaps because of—his lack of moral compass, he always found another direction to head in. As for Flint, Judd would already have consigned him to the swing bin of politics. Loyalty was a marketing ploy: If it didn’t get you your tenth cup of coffee free, it was wasted effort.