Clown Town полностью

“Sounds like you’re in a big empty room. Except someone’s cleaning it.”

“Welles, I won’t need your services this evening, and I don’t need your Sherlock Holmes tribute act now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yes, the thing is—”

There’s always a thing, isn’t there? thought Judd, breaking the call. There’s always a thing. What this one was, he didn’t care.

The woman was banging her Hoover against the legs of the tables that circled the dance floor, and the out-of-sight transistor was still emitting Tinnitus Pan Alley pop, but Judd had been assured the cleaners finished at five, and that he’d have the place to himself thereafter. Not a standard venue for a chinwag, but left-field thinking had its advantages. For a start, Belwether wouldn’t be expecting it, and Belwether’s role tonight was to be knocked off guard before being helped up, dusted down, and told what was what. The new world order was putting its boots on, polishing its shield and preparing for the long march west, and Britain could either accept the new reality and pledge support, or stand cap-in-hand by the roadside, choking on dust. Judd was clear on where he wanted to be, which was somewhere in the vanguard, an accepted ambassador from the old order showered with appropriate gratitude, and if it took an off-piste assignation to smooth his path, he was fine with that.

Also, he liked a fucking nightclub. Sue him.

“Missed a bit,” he told the cleaner in passing, and the look she gave him was a perfect mask. You needed to be an expert, someone like Judd, to appreciate the hatred beneath.

The Dogs were little and large, old and young. I used to knock about with your former boss, River thought. He kneed me in the balls; I laid him out with a length of lead piping. Good times. But discretion being the better part of getting your head kicked in, he remained in the car with Louisa while the new arrivals chatted to the police officers, flashed their ID, then watched the uniforms reluctantly climb into their cars and depart.

“That is not a welcome development,” Louisa said.

“It means we can leave. I need to find Sid.”

“We broke into a safe house. They’re not going to just let us go.”

“If my career is as . . .”

“Finished.”

“As finished as you say, you know what? These guys have no jurisdiction over me.”

“No, but there are two of them.”

“I’ll explain I’m a civilian.”

“They’ll find out anyway. Once they run your card.”

“Louisa, Sid’s missing. If you think I’m going to sit here while those clowns fiddle with their buttons, you’re on the wrong channel.” He opened his door.

“Just don’t hit anyone.”

“I hardly ever—”

“Just don’t.”

She watched him get out of the car and walk towards the Dogs, one of whom was on his phone, the other awaiting instructions. Both regarded River with the amused contempt of tourists approached by a juggler. Louisa shook her head and looked at her own phone. She had a text from Devon: I don’t mean to hassle. But had any thoughts yet? Yes, so why hadn’t she let him know them? She keyed Okay. I’m in, deleted it, thought some more, then rekeyed the exact same words. Then deleted them. When she looked up, River was punching the young Dog in the face.

“Of course you did that,” she said.

The other Dog was reaching into his jacket for something, far more quickly than those words suggest, when River leaned into him, hooked a foot behind his ankle, and then the Dog was on the ground and River was running to the car. “Change of plan,” he said, climbing in, starting the engine.

“This is a plan?”

The Dog jumped aside as River swerved past, loose stones scattering. He lost a wing mirror to the no parking sign and hit the main road to a fusillade of complaint. Louisa, seatbelt secured, nevertheless had a hand on the dashboard to inhibit her departure through the windscreen and suppressed a yelp as he turned right, avoiding collision with a Deliveroo scooter by a weasel’s whisker. Louisa caught a glimpse of a face turning white, and then they were up the road, the playing fields to their left giving way to houses, driveways, a succession of sculpted hedges and pebbled drives. She said, “Drop me anywhere. I can walk from here.”

“He was basically asking for it,” River said, meaning the Dog he’d punched.

Her phone rang, and when she answered Lamb said, “On a scale of one to ten, how fucked-up is your afternoon? Asking for a friend.”

“Yeah, turns out River’s not on a job for Taverner after all.”

“I worked that out. Ask me how I worked that out.”

“How did you—”

“Because I am a senior officer of His Majesty’s Intelligence Services, with responsibility for a department manned, sorry, personned, by wetbrains. And when a pair of half-arsed fuckwits from said department crash a safe house, attract the attention of the local woodentops and bring the wrath of the Service’s trained poodles down upon their heads, I get woken up and told all about it. Is Cartwright behind the wheel?”

“Yes.”