Clown Town полностью

“Just stick your head round the door once it’s over.”

She’d have done that anyway. Let him know things were okay, or that they weren’t. This had been her job for as long as she could remember, but it was the first time she could recall that they’d exchanged places; that it was she who’d sent the slow horses out, he who was wishing them safe at home.

When she reached her room, she closed her door. There was work to do—she could always find work—but she wouldn’t do it. Instead she sat and let the dark gather round her, wrapping her as tightly as a bandage.

Off the hook, because his Sherlock Holmes tribute act wasn’t required—thank you, Peter Judd, whose own Honey-Monster-meets-Vlad-the-Impaler schtick wore thin on short acquaintance—Devon had nevertheless checked in with the office, because while the client was always right the client was also frequently a dick, liable to confuse his own best interests for something momentarily more attractive. Whether this involved a night on the lash or an interlude with a mistress, you couldn’t—in Judd’s case—rule out his needing a personal protection officer at some point, if not an exorcist or a vet.

The mother ship was in Holborn, a suite of offices with customer-facing talent in the shape of a well-groomed pair who might have been brother and sister, or possibly sisters, and with whose blessing he borrowed the key to the Watchtower. This was the big brother room, tech-heavy in the stylish way more common to TV shows than reality: There were no discarded bits of kit, no unattached cables; just a space station’s worth of expensive hardware, all varying shades of white, and no surfaces disfigured by anything as harsh as a right angle. A room where you might happily drink bubble tea, Devon thought, as he settled in front of a screen and keyed in Judd’s customer code.

Because here at POM—Peace of Mind—they watched people but they also watched them. They were there when the client needed backup, but they were also there when the client thought the client needed privacy because it was in the quietest moments that the loudest bangs occurred. So clients not only knowingly ceded backstage passes to their public events, they unknowingly surrendered their daily toings and nocturnal froings, the moments when they believed their watchers off the clock. There were privacy issues here, but the contracts POM’s clients signed contained enough small print to give an owl a migraine, and encoded within that cluster bomb of subclauses was all the legal protection POM required to monitor its clients’ bowel activity, let alone their more public movements. In Judd’s case, this legal raincoat took the form of a tracking device Devon had tucked into his possession, a barcoded Gift Aid card, which Devon was confident Judd was unlikely to notice. On the monitor in front of him, this now flashed its location. Judd, it seemed, was over to the east; near Nob-Nobs, the club he’d hired last night for his daughter’s birthday. Devon recalled their earlier conversation: Sounds like you’re in a big empty room. Except someone’s cleaning it. Yeah. He was at Nob-Nobs.

Probably a follow-up encounter. Nightclubs employed young people, Judd’s natural prey. He remembered telling Louisa that rich bastards or not, none of them are scumbags, and suppressed a sigh. There was a reason he hadn’t told Louisa that Judd was on their client list, and the reason was this: Judd was on their client list.

He wiped the screen, closed it down and left the building, looking for somewhere to eat. Judd was no longer on his agenda. Louisa, though: Here was a coincidence. He’d been thinking about her not two minutes ago, and now, as he joined the early evening throng, her name was lighting up his phone.

“I’m assuming you keep tabs on where your clients are at any given moment?”

“It was good to see you too. And no, it was my pleasure.”

“In which case, it’d be handy to know where Peter Judd is right now. For your sake as well as mine. His too, come to think of it.”

“Judd?”

“Don’t play games.”

“I don’t remember mentioning—”

Not to mention remembering not mentioning.

Louisa said, “Devon, did you really think I wouldn’t do due diligence? Of course I found out he was on your client list. And what I need to know now is, where is he?”

“What’s up?”

There was silence, or nearly; an aural scuffle came down the line, as if Louisa had her hand over her phone while a mini-conference took place.

When she came back, she said, “It’s a possibility, nothing more.”

“What is?”

“That he might be in danger.”

“What sort of danger?”

“How many kinds are there?”

He came to a halt. Louisa was one thing, but the slow horses? They weren’t famous for jumping the right fences. If this was her own conclusion, he’d be prepared to back it. If it was something a Slough House cabal had come up with, it would be wise not to over-commit.

“That sounds vague.”