The Clown Service

CHAPTER ONE: LUDWIG

a) Secret Intelligence Services, SIS Building, Vauxhall Cross

The difference in the light unsettled Toby Greene during those first few days back home. In the Middle East the air was clear, everything had hard edges – looked almost sharp enough to cut. Here the landscape, beneath thin cloud, was insipid, pale and blurred. As if someone had poured skimmed milk over the city.

The concussion wasn’t helping. Toby was dizzy and nauseous. The world was a place he could imagine slipping from, falling through the thick, imaginary surface into something even worse. The sombre face of his Section Chief’s secretary seemed to suggest that was indeed about to happen. Perhaps he had started falling the minute Yoosuf had hit him. Perhaps he was finally going to hit the ground.

Toby looked at his reflection in the glass partition that separated them from the shop floor of open-plan desks and bored data analysts. He saw a man of compromise: not fat but fatter than he would like; not ugly but not attractive either; not stupid but sat waiting to be labelled as such. The bandage made his light-brown hair stick up, an extra piece of absurdity. He stared at his face and had an almost uncontrollable urge to punch it. We all aspire, he thought, we all dream. Why can I not be even half the man I want to be?

‘You can go in now,’ said the secretary.

His Section Chief didn’t stand as Toby entered, just watched him as if casually interested in the progress of a limping dog.

There was a moment of silence. His superior scratched at his grey beard. Toby found himself transfixed by the way the action made the older man’s jowls quiver. The fat beneath the skin had stretched his features out, turning his whole face into a mask. He couldn’t bear to think what might be underneath.

‘You’re a headache, Greene,’ his superior said eventually.

Toby thought for a moment, wondering if the man had asked him whether his head ached. It did. But he hadn’t.

‘I despair,’ his Chief said, plainly feeling it was necessary to make his displeasure clearer.

‘Oh,’ said Toby.

‘If you worked somewhere like McDonalds,’ his Chief leaned back in his chair, ‘and let me be clear that I am using that as an example not only because it popped readily to mind but also because I think it represents a level of employment that would suit one of your intellect –’ he stared at Toby, as if quite baffled by him ‘– if you worked there, you would simply be fired.’

‘Sir?’

‘For showing such consistent and inarguable ineptitude for the position in which you are employed.’

‘Oh.’

‘Fired.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But you don’t work at McDonalds, do you Greene?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Or indeed any brand of fast food restaurant.’

‘No, sir.’

‘You work in intelligence – a fact so weighted in irony that I would be tempted to laugh, were it not for the bubbling disgust I feel for you robbing me of my mirth.’

Toby opened his mouth to argue. After all, he could only take so much of a beating, as Yoosuf had recently proved.

‘Don’t say anything, Greene,’ his superior replied. ‘It would be safer. Because if you said something I might accidentally lose my professional grip and stave in your soft skull with this decorative monstrosity.’ He pointed at a silver horse that leaped perpetually skyward from the corner of his desk. ‘A present from my wife, and nothing would please me more than to break it on your idiotic head.’ He reached out and twisted the ornament slightly, as if judging the best edge to lead with when using it in an assault. ‘I could kill you with impunity. To hell with British law. We get rid of dead bodies every day.’

Toby felt the pain in his head intensifying.

‘It would be easy,’ his superior continued, ‘but I will resist. I will resist because I do not like to waste the taxpayer’s money. Your career thus far represents an investment of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Hundreds of thousands of pounds spent trying to beat the knowledge of spycraft into that thick, curdled brain of yours.’

‘He got the jump on me,’ Toby managed to blurt out. ‘It could have happened to anyone.’

The Section Chief reached towards the horse ornament again. ‘Don’t make me do it,’ he said. ‘One solid blow, that’s all it will take. Your medical report assures me that Yoosuf has weakened your cranium considerably.’

Toby sighed and lowered his head. A beaten dog accepting the flexed belt of his master.

‘It was a simple assignment, Greene,’ his Chief continued, ‘pathetically so. You just had to babysit him. A man whose hobbies include collecting sheet music and playing the bassoon. A man I would have previously considered one of the most delicate in espionage. Before he brained you, that is. At which point you became the most fragile flower on the books. A fragile flower that I now have to replant.’

His chief sat back in his chair and looked out of the window. ‘Somewhere shady, I think. Somewhere the bad weeds won’t immediately throttle you.’

The ensuing silence seemed to swell like a tick feeding on awkwardness. Toby wondered if it might eventually crush them both beneath its terrible weight.

‘Of course,’ said his Chief finally, ‘there was that fuss in Basra wasn’t there?’ He clicked away at his computer, making a show of searching for information that Toby knew well enough he already had. ‘A possible PTSD diagnosis?’

Toby didn’t know if he was really expected to answer. He chose to assume not.

‘A diagnosis you fiercely denied at the time. Is that the root of the problem?’ his superior continued. ‘Was that the chink of vulnerability that brought the whole lot crumbling down?’

He looked at Toby. ‘Was that when I should have realised you weren’t cut out for our line of work? That you didn’t have the…’ he looked up at the office roof, as if hoping to find the word he was thinking of scribbled on one of the ceiling tiles, ‘fortitude?’

He brought his gaze back down to the computer. ‘I always said there was a problem with sending non-military personnel into hot zones. I should have seen that you weren’t ready for it.’

Toby thought back to those few months, and one night in particular, when the sky had filled with harsh light and noise and the whole city had trembled. Who could have been ready?

‘In the old days it was so much easier,’ his Section Chief mused, ‘you threw a man into hell and he managed. These days I’m surrounded by analysts and doctors telling me to mind my poor, genteel boys.’ The man gazed into space, remembering the glory days when he hadn’t been expected to mind his operatives’ feelings.

‘The problem,’ he said, ‘has always been that you’re a dreamer. You joined up wanting to be James Bond, grown fat on a diet of TV shows and spy novels.’

Toby remained silent.

‘You expected to be working for George Smiley, no doubt,’ his chief continued, ‘a genteel old chap with a penchant for cardigans held together with pipe smoke. Instead you got me.’

He sighed and swiped his mouse on the surface of the desk. ‘Well, if this is the Circus,’ he said, referencing the slang term for the Secret Service, ‘then Section 37 is where we keep the clowns. And frankly, they’re welcome to you.’

He scribbled on a piece of paper and pushed it across the desk. ‘Report there on Monday and never trouble me again.’

Toby stared at the piece of paper and opened his mouth to speak.

The Section Chief snarled, grabbed the horse statuette off his desk and threw it at him.

b) Flat 3, Palmer Court, Euston, London

Toby uncoiled the bandage from his head, then leaned back with a handheld vanity mirror so that he could see his wound in the reflection. A crop circle with puckered flesh at the centre of it. He wondered if combing carefully might cover it up. A couple of minutes’ effort resulted only in an even sorer head and a piling of hair whose position was obviously contrived. Blatant as dust swept into the corner of an ugly room.

Throwing the comb at the sink, Toby went into the kitchen to find something to drink.

His doctor had been unequivocal with regards to mixing alcohol with his medication. It was something that Should Not Be Done. Finding he couldn’t care less, he opened a bottle of wine.

After draining half a glass while standing at the worktop, he refilled it and tried to decide what to do next. Naturally, given his self-destructive streak, he called his father.

‘Who is it?’

‘Toby.’

There was a lengthy pause at the end of the line. Then, ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘No, just calling to see how you are.’

‘Oh.’ There was another pause; his father couldn’t have made his disinterest clearer had he hung up.

‘So, how are you?’

‘Fine. Busy.’

‘Busy doing what? You haven’t broken a sweat in four years.’ Toby had meant the comment to sound light-hearted. It was out of his mouth before it occurred to him that it might come across as a criticism. His father certainly took it as such.

‘Retired doesn’t mean lazy,’ he said. ‘I can still be busy.’

‘I know. I was joking.’

Toby’s father made a noise that could have been dismissal or phlegm. Then was silent again.

‘I’ll ring back another time, shall I?’

‘No,’ his father replied, ‘chat away.’

‘Right, well it was more to find out how you were really.’

‘Busy, like I said.’

‘Yes.’ There was a pause, then Toby added, ‘With what?’

‘Stuff, you know, just… stuff.’ His father seemed to suddenly remember how conversations worked. ‘You?’

‘Oh, some fuss at work, nothing major. I could do without it, though.’

‘I bet. You’re lucky to have a job in this recession. So, what have you done now?’

‘Done?’

‘You say there’s been trouble. What have you done?’

The fact that his father was right hardly helped Toby forgive him the assumption. ‘Why would I have done anything?’ he countered. ‘All I said was that there was trouble at work. Why do you automatically think that means I’ve fucked up somehow?’

‘Experience,’ his father laughed. Toby was familiar with that laugh. It was a common shield, his jolly weapon to be re-employed should Toby argue over the comment. ‘Don’t be so sensitive,’ his father would say. ‘Couldn’t you tell I was joking?’

Toby refused to give his father any satisfaction. He took another mouthful of wine. ‘I’m being transferred, actually – moved to a better department.’

‘Better, eh? Says who?’

‘Says me. But I would rather have had a bit more notice; it leaves a lot of unfinished business on my desk.’

‘You always flitted about, never could settle.’

‘Not my choice,’ Toby replied, feeling his anger build, a roaring tension that made him stiffen from neck to toe, becoming one clenched muscle. ‘They need me elsewhere.’

‘God help them!’ – that laugh again. Toby felt the stem of his wine glass snap in his hand and the bowl tumbled to the floor to spill wine across the carpet. ‘What’s wrong now?’ his father asked, responding to Toby’s short, startled cry.

‘Nothing,’ Toby insisted, refusing to admit anything that might be seen as idiocy in the eyes of his father. God, how tiring it was trying to be perfect. He threw the stem onto the sofa and squatted down to pick up the bowl of the glass.

‘You made a noise,’ his father said, utterly attentive for the first time in the phone call.

Toby went to the kitchen, meaning to tug some kitchen roll off the holder but it was empty. He always forgot to replace the roll. Stupid.

‘No,’ he said into the phone as he rummaged in the cupboard under the sink, turfing out a mess of carrier bags and the sort of kitchen junk that was never used but never thrown away. ‘Must have been the line.’

He found a kitchen roll and tried to tug it free from the shrink-wrapped plastic packaging. It fought him and, as the anger continued to build, he wished he could tear it to fucking shreds.

‘Anyway,’ Toby declared, determined to keep his voice even despite his jaw beginning to tighten as much as the rest of him, ‘I start next Monday – so at least I can have a few days to chill out a bit. The doctor says I should avoid doing much. Concussion can sneak up on you, apparently.’

‘Only you could manage to brain yourself working in HR,’ his father said. ‘Who knew filing cabinets had such fight in them?’

Of course he had had to lie about the cause of his accident, his father not having been cleared to know the nature of his son’s job. But it irritated Toby. It was bad enough that his father always seemed to consider him a failure without him having to bolster that opinion.

‘Yeah,’ he laughed, deciding it was better to brush the comment off than dwell on it. ‘Stationery has teeth in the Civil Service.’

‘I imagine it’s the only thing that has. So what’s this new job of yours then?’

‘More of the same, really,’ Toby replied as noncommittally as he could – it was always easier to maintain a lie that was barely uttered in the first place. ‘Just a different department.’

‘And this is what I spend my taxes on. Christ! I’m still paying your pocket money, aren’t I?’

‘I’m sure it’s money well spent.’ Of course, Toby’s Section Chief hadn’t thought so and he was quite sure his father wouldn’t have either. All the more reason to keep his secrets. He tried to change the subject. ‘When are you coming up to London next?’

‘There’s a sale on the 23rd that’s probably worth the train ride.’

Like seeing your son isn’t? thought Toby. ‘Maybe we could have lunch while you’re here.’

‘Look at you trying to take extra time off so soon into your new job.’

‘Just lunch, the department’s flexible on lunch.’

‘Well, it shouldn’t be,’ said his father, ‘it’s a waste of taxpayers’ money.’

‘Forget it then.’ Toby wasn’t going to fight for it; he was only too happy to not see him. ‘Listen, I’d better go.’

‘Got something more important to do, have you?’ And, again, the laugh, just to make it quite clear that his father wasn’t really bothered. ‘I’m sure I’ll be talking to you again soon.’

The phone went dead and Toby spent a few minutes contemplating the red wine-stain on the rug.

c) Section 37, Wood Green, London

Monday morning crept slowly across the city as Toby headed to the Piccadilly line like a man going to his death.

The raucous clatter of the Tube didn’t intrude upon him as he sat staring at his own reflection in the darkened glass of the window. He seemed to see someone he didn’t know anymore. Even his clothes looked uncomfortable. The suit that never quite fitted the way he hoped it would, the shirt collar that would never sit still. The man in his head never appeared in the mirror; it was always this fragile idiot.

He got off at Wood Green and ascended the stairway into a riot of traffic and pedestrians. The noise wrong-footed him as it occasionally had since his injury. It was all engines, shouting and the roar of life. A feeling of claustrophobia swelled up inside him and he dashed across the road looking for somewhere to catch his breath. Misjudging the lights, he narrowly missed being hit by a bus, a solid red wall of metal and glass that swung towards him as if out of nowhere.

The pavement hardly seemed safer. Having lost his rhythm he felt as if he were in everyone’s way, constantly swinging to one side or another as people converged on him. He had to fight an urge to shout as he turned off the main road to find a place of relative silence.

Resting against a street sign Toby caught his breath, trying to tug the collar of his shirt away from his sweating throat. Was this it now? A promising career finished because of a series of mistakes and panic attacks? Had he fallen so far? The last few years had certainly rained punches on him: the shooting in Israel, the bomb attack in Basra, now Yoosuf… Everyone had their fair share of bad luck in this business, but his seemed particularly sour. It weighed on him. It made him feel spent.

The temptation simply to quit had surfaced repeatedly. A constant argument with himself that he could never quite resolve. Was he really cut out for this work? The way he was feeling now suggested not, mentally battered from one conflict after another, and yet… the more he suffered the more he was determined to push through it, to regain the strength he was sure he had once had. The act of giving up seemed a failure too far. The more it tempted him, the more he became determined to continue. He could be better than this – had to be better than this.

Checking the map on his phone to make sure he knew where he was going, with a deep breath, Toby pushed on. He moved back to the bustling street, like a deep-sea diver leaving the air-filled surface far behind him.

Past the mobile-phone shops and fast-food restaurants, the shopping precinct and the market, Toby worked his way along the main road. He grew more accustomed to the noise as he walked and was almost his old self by the time he reached the nondescript door that led to the offices of Section 37. It stood to the left of a cluttered window offering cheap international call minutes, phone-unlocking and cheque-cashing.

‘Lovely,’ he muttered, trying to decide between the two buttons mounted next to the flaking, purple-painted door. Neither was marked. He jabbed the upper one.

Inside the shop an angry Turkish man began hurling abuse at children loitering by the racks of cheap mobile-phone covers. If nothing else, Toby thought, his career had taught him to understand curses in most languages.

The door was opened by a jaded young woman in a silk dressing gown. It had been slung on in a casual manner, like a serviette draped over a nice slice of cake to dissuade flies.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘You woke me up.’ Most people would have registered a Russian accent, but Toby could be more precise. It was Armenian.

‘Oh,’ Toby said, ‘I’m sorry, I was after Mr Shining.’

Her shoulders sagged but she gave a soft, sleepy smile. ‘Wrong bell,’ she said, pointing at where he had pressed the upper, rather than lower button.

‘So sorry,’ Toby said, ‘do you think I might come in anyway?’

At that, the smile vanished and she held her hand out in flat-palmed denial. ‘Nobody visits August unless they are approved,’ she said. For a moment he thought her English was off and had been about to insist that it was actually May. Then he realised that his new boss must be called August. August Shining. It was not the most inconspicuous name a spy could wish for.

‘I’m expected,’ he assured her.

She settled a suspicious look on him and pressed the correct button. The buzzer could be heard going off up the stairs behind her.

‘Yes?’ asked a voice.

‘August,’ said the girl, ‘I have a man here who says you expect him.’

‘Well,’ said the man who sounded much older than Toby had envisaged, ‘what’s he like?’

Toby sighed as he was given a thorough once-over by the Armenian girl.

He looked over her shoulder at the dingy hall and the stairs that climbed towards the pale light of a window shrouded in yellowing dust and cobwebs. It certainly didn’t look worth the effort it was taking to gain access.

‘He’s late in his twenties,’ the girl said, ‘probably eleven and a half stone, maybe twelve. Spent a lot of time abroad, his skin shows too much tan for the weather here these last months.’

‘Sunbed?’ asked the voice.

‘Not the type,’ she replied. ‘He is alone and has been for long time, I think. He wears his clothes and hair like they are habits. He deals with them because he has to, not because he wants to be handsome.’

‘He sounds charming.’

‘And he’s stood right here,’ Toby reminded them both.

‘Oh, let him in,’ said Shining. ‘If he wants to kill me you can soon come to my rescue.’

‘Is damn right,’ she said, stepping back to let Toby pass. ‘I break his neck if he hurt my August.’

There was the sound of a door opening from above and Toby climbed around a corner in the stairway to come face to face with August Shining.

The man looked even older than his voice had suggested, with thin hair combed perfectly over a liver-spotted scalp. A white beard helped to hide some of the wrinkles, but his eyes were sharp – watching Toby from behind thin, designer wire-framed glasses. Wearing a fawn three-piece suit with a thick, dark-green checked shirt, Shining looked something between an old-fashioned country gentlemen and a fold-out fashion spread from GQ.

‘I don’t think he’s here to kill me, Tamar,’ Shining commented. ‘You can try to get some more sleep.’

‘I will keep the ears open,’ the girl replied, ‘and if he turns out bad you can shout.’

‘I certainly will.’

Shining stepped back and gestured for Toby to make his way through the door ajar behind him.

The office for Section 37 was a nest of filing cabinets and comfortable soft furnishings. Bookshelves lined one wall, framed black and white photographs another. A pair of leather sofas formed an avenue for the window to pour in North London light; it spilled out onto a carpet that was manila-envelope brown.

‘Sit down,’ said Shining, pointing to one of the sofas, ‘I’ll just get some coffee on the go.’

He stepped out of the room and there came the distant sound of running taps and coffee filters being banged against the plastic of a swing bin.

Toby walked over to look at the book shelf. It was a combination of geographical texts, political manuals, occult books and trashy horror novels. He pulled out a book and looked briefly at the blood-stained woman on the cover. Apparently it was a ‘thrill-storm of gore’ and ‘a meaty must-read’. He returned the book and moved on to the photographs. They were of locations all over the world, from obvious tourist spots like the Eiffel Tower or the Sphinx to other, more obscure locations: a West German alleyway; a rain-soaked street in Portugal; an icy bandstand freezing its wooden bones in an indeterminate landscape. Obviously they must mean something to Shining, but Toby couldn’t guess what. Places he’d worked possibly. If he’d been a member of the Service for as long as his age allowed, he must have seen his fair share of the world.

‘Do you take milk or sugar?’ came a voice from the kitchen.

‘No, thank you,’ Toby replied, having taken to drinking his coffee black as he kept running out of milk.

‘Then you’re easy to please,’ said Shining, coming back into the room with a pair of coffee cups, one of which he handed to his visitor.

Toby took it and stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, feeling stranded – in foreign territory.

‘My wailing wall,’ said Shining, nodding to the photographs before sitting down on one of the sofas and looking out of the window.

Toby found the conviviality disturbing. First he had been made a drink; now he was standing while his superior relaxed by the window.

‘It’s a good spot,’ said Shining, nodding at the view outside, ‘though I have no doubt my paymasters would begrudge my saying so.’ He looked to Toby and smiled. ‘The only reason people get sent here is when they’ve made someone stupid but important hate them.’ He gestured once again to the opposite sofa. Toby sat. ‘Was that how it was for you?’

Toby thought for a moment. Unsure whether to tell the truth or not. Eventually he decided it could hardly matter. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘I let someone get away from me on a mission.’

‘We’ve all done that. Why was this a particular problem?’

‘I was cocky. I let him get away because I didn’t pay attention. I underestimated him.’

‘And he surprised you?’

‘Yes. He hit me over the head and ran.’

‘Hit you with what?’

‘Does it matter? A bust of Beethoven.’

‘It matters. It would hardly be funny were it a crowbar instead of a porcelain ornament of a dead composer.’

‘I don’t find it particularly funny anyway.’

‘No, but I bet your colleagues did.’

Toby shrugged. ‘Probably.’

‘What do they call you?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘After it happened, they must have given you a nickname – what was it?’

Toby didn’t really see it was any of Shining’s business. He had hoped to leave the name behind with the transfer. ‘They called me Ludwig.’

‘Really? I would have guessed at Rollover.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m old enough to know who Chuck Berry was. Doesn’t matter.’ He took a sip of his coffee and fixed Toby with a penetrating stare. ‘Are you washed-up?’ he asked. ‘Do you deserve to be hidden away out here?’

Toby didn’t feel annoyed by the question, something that would surprise him when he thought back on it. ‘Depends where “here” is,’ he replied, ‘and what I’m expected to do.’

‘A sensible, if evasive answer. Section 37 is an anomaly within the Service. A borderless agency that nobody can quite decide who runs. Are we part of the SIS or the Security Service? Neither, even if pressed, will admit to us. The ugly date brought home after a drunken night out. For all that, you’re expected to fight and, if necessary, die protecting your country. Does that sound unreasonable?’

‘Yes, but I’d probably do it if I had to.’

Shining smiled. ‘Good lad! Maybe we’ll be able to show them there’s life in Ludwig yet, eh?’

‘Do you have to call me that?’

‘No,’ Shining smiled, ‘but I probably will anyway. Never run away from the labels they give you. Wear them with pride and rob them of their sting.’

‘You’d need that philosophy,’ said Toby without thinking, ‘being called August Shining.’

Instead of being angered his new Section Chief laughed and nodded. ‘It’s not as florid as it sounds. I was born in August, and my parents were too busy to think of something better.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ Toby admitted, then immediately changed the subject for fear of getting onto the subject of his father. ‘So what exactly is it we do here?’

‘They didn’t tell you?’ Shining finished his coffee. ‘No. I imagine they wouldn’t. We’re the smallest department in the Secret Service, and exist purely by force of determination and my pig-headedness. We are charged with protecting the country or its interests from preternatural terrorism.’

Toby had to think about that. The words simply hadn’t made sense so he assumed he had heard them incorrectly. He repeated them out loud. ‘Preternatural terrorism?’

‘Absolutely. You’ve got a lot to learn.’

The sound in Toby’s head returned, that white noise of confusion that had assailed him when he was out on the street. It was the sound of a mind folding under the weight of things it simply didn’t want to process.

‘Do you believe in the paranormal?’ Shining asked. Toby simply stared at him, desperately wishing he had misunderstood the question, the word, the concept.

‘No,’ he responded, aware that the tone of his voice suggested he thought the answer obvious.

He needn’t have worried about giving offence. Shining merely smiled. It was a soft, indulgent smile, the sort you’d offer to a child who has just expressed disbelief that men ever walked on the moon. ‘You will,’ he said, ‘unless you’re foolhardy.’ He winked. ‘And I don’t think you are.’

There was the beep of a phone and Shining ferreted in his pocket. Swiping at the screen of his phone he peered through his glasses at the text message and gave a quiet chuckle. ‘And maybe this will help us decide one way or the other,’ he said.

He wandered out of the room only to reappear shrugging on a long overcoat. ‘Come on then,’ he said, ‘let’s begin your education.’

d) Piccadilly Line, Southbound for King’s Cross, London

They were underneath the city and Shining was still saying things Toby wasn’t sure he wanted to hear.

‘Of course,’ he said. His lips were close to Toby’s ear so he could be heard over the noisy line, like a devil perched on his shoulder whispering confidences. ‘In the ’60s everybody had a section like ours. Those were the days! Budgets as over-inflated as the nation’s paranoia. There was nothing in which we couldn’t believe.

‘I was brought on straight out of Cambridge,’ Shining continued, ‘selected because of a frankly awful thesis about the philosophical implications of time travel.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘You could write about any old twaddle then and some fool would give you a doctorate.’

The train drew to a halt at Turnpike Lane and a large man clambered aboard, balancing himself against a tatty shopping trolley. He took one look at Toby and Shining and waddled to the far end of the carriage, ignoring the empty seats next to them.

‘It obviously impressed somebody,’ Shining continued, ‘because I was running a whole section within twelve months. Organising a network of forty or so agents, funnelling cash into research on everything from remote viewing to the living dead.’

‘The living dead,’ Toby repeated, dreamily and involuntarily, like a hypnotised man minutes away from swaggering around the stage in the belief he had transformed into a chicken.

‘I know, ridiculous, though intelligence suggested the Russians cracked it.’ Shining tugged at the crease in his trousers, ever the dandy. ‘They always were so much better funded, even back then.’

Toby slowly became aware that the other passengers were all moving further down the carriage, leaving the half that he and Shining were sitting in completely empty.

‘Then the ’70s came,’ said Shining, ‘and everything was budget cuts and a new broom. If you didn’t fit the new, leaner Service, then your section was closed and you were folded in somewhere else. If I hadn’t saved Harold Wilson’s neck – literally – from that bastard Romanian and his perverse clan, I would have suffered the fate of everyone else. As it is I operate under a special sanction. Section 37 will continue to operate while its Section Chief, that would be me, continues to draw breath.’

‘Better look after yourself then,’ Toby said, staring at the other passengers. However brazen his stare, they didn’t seem to be aware of it. Or aware of him at all.

‘Well, that was rather the problem,’ Shining agreed, ‘they might not have been able to close me down but they could make it as hard as possible for me to function. One old man in an office kept right on the periphery of the city, struggling to run a network and still manage to file a report or three. I must admit I was surprised to receive your transfer order.’

‘You and me both.’

‘I imagine it was processed without those further up the rungs of state noticing. I can only guess what Sir Robin will make of it when he hears; the word is bound to filter up to his rarefied peak of Whitehall soon enough.’

‘Sir Robin?’ Toby couldn’t take his eyes off the other passengers. Several times now he had caught one or other of them looking directly at him and Shining. Their eyes registered no response of any kind; they were the vague stares of listless travellers working their way through the adverts for mobile phones and holidays.

‘One of my more forthright opponents,’ Shining replied, ‘God knows why, took a dislike to me and has made life awkward ever since. I’m sure he’ll be borderline psychotic once he hears the section staff allocation has doubled.’

This roused Toby. ‘So, presumably he’ll be eager to stick the knife in my career, too?’

‘My dear boy,’ Shining replied, ‘if you had a career they would hardly have sent you to me now, would they? You haven’t a thing to lose.’

How depressing, thought Toby, to have finally hit rock bottom. He went back to surveying the other passengers. One young woman was gazing right at him, eyes glazed, attention miles away. Toby stared right back. Then, just for fun, he pulled a face at her. She didn’t respond. So he couldn’t even offend someone on the Tube, something he’d always thought one of the easiest things to do in London.

e) 63 Sampson Court, King’s Cross, London

They emerged from the tunnels into the gleaming tiles and unrestrained panic of King’s Cross. Everywhere you looked people were either running with cases or tutting at those who were.

‘We’ll cut through St. Pancras,’ Shining suggested. ‘It’s quicker.’

Now away from the strange atmosphere of the train carriage, Toby was thinking over some of what Shining had said. He couldn’t decide how to respond to any of it. On the one hand, Shining was charming, gentle and entirely believable. On the other, he was alluding to things that simply could not be true. Toby could hardly decide whether he was in the company of a joker or a lunatic. It made matters more difficult that his new Section Chief seemed clearly neither.

‘How long have you been on your own?’ Toby ventured, as it seemed the least provocative of all the possible questions that had occurred to him.

Shining stopped abruptly, forcing a family to halt and filter either side of him like a river working its way past an awkwardly-placed rock. ‘That’s a question,’ he said. ‘I had a secretary on work placement at some point in the early ’80s. Sandra. She ran screaming from the building before lunchtime on her third day. I never saw her again.’ He continued walking. ‘Though I did give her the best work review I could muster after so little time in her company.’

So Section 37 had been a one-man band for nearly thirty years? It was no wonder that Shining seemed strange. Anyone would develop eccentricities over that time.

And yet, again, he was forced to admit that Shining didn’t act strangely. He said strange things but that was not at all the same.

Studying him as they passed by the announcement board of St Pancras International and on towards the Midland Road exit, Toby decided he had never seen a more centred and controlled man in his life. Despite his age, Shining moved with a grace and delicacy that Toby could only dream of. He was smart to the point of fastidiousness, groomed and scented in the natural way of a man with class rather than an urge to sell used vehicles. He was, quite simply, exactly the sort of man Toby wished himself to be, albeit with an extra thirty or forty years on the clock.

Shining pushed through the glass doors that led outside, dropping a coin into a homeless man’s hat as he passed.

‘Thanks, Mr. Shining,’ the man replied, before looking expectantly towards Toby. Toby mumbled about his lack of change, stuffing his hands in his pockets to muffle the sound of jangling as he jogged across the road behind the old man.

‘So,’ he said, once they were side by side again, ‘where are we going?’

Shining was looking at the barricade that surrounded the construction of the Francis Crick Institute. He shook his head slowly. ‘We’ll have to deal with this one day,’ he said. ‘Mark my words, it’s a bomb waiting to go off right in the centre of the city.’

Toby looked at the proud posters that covered the barricade, filled – as all such things are – with words like ‘legacy’ and ‘future’ but singularly avoiding the now. ‘Just a research place, isn’t it?’

‘There’s no such thing as “just” research,’ Shining replied. ‘I’ve spent a lifetime tidying up the unwelcome answers to questions idiots should never have asked.’ He turned to smile at Toby. ‘Though I didn’t answer yours.’

Toby wondered for a moment whether Shining was suggesting he was an idiot.

‘We’re going to see a couple of agents of mine,’ said Shining as they moved on past the construction site and into the warren of apartment blocks and houses that lay beyond it. ‘And provide you with the first in a new career of bizarre experiences.’

Stopping at the gate of a courtyard block of flats he tapped a number into the entry pad for the lock and ushered Toby through. ‘I hope so, anyway,’ he added.

‘So you’re not sure if it’s going to be bizarre or not?’ Toby asked, confused.

‘Oh, no,’ Shining chuckled, ‘I have no doubt of that. I just don’t know if it will be the start of your career or the end of it. After all, it rather depends on whether you survive.’

Toby decided he was having his leg pulled. Rather than argue he gave a flat smile and followed Shining across the courtyard.

‘They’ve been at it again,’ came a voice from behind the row of bins. A West Indian woman loomed up from between a pair of brimming dumpsters and fixed Toby with a distinctly hostile look. ‘You know anything about that?’

‘What?’ he replied.

‘Scaring my Roberta,’ she replied, lifting up a tabby cat that had the good grace to look embarrassed. ‘They come here to sell their funny smokes and pills and they chase my Roberta all around the garden,’ she continued. ‘They want to watch I don’t catch them at it. I’d beat them within an inch of their lives, yes I would.’

‘And who would blame you?’ said Shining, offering his fingers for Roberta to sniff. Toby, impressed by his bravery, knew he would never have done such a thing in case Roberta chose to bite them off.

‘They think the police will protect them,’ the woman continued, ‘but I’ve not met a policeman I couldn’t talk down.’ She looked at them curiously. ‘You’re not policemen, are you?’

‘Far from it,’ said Shining, ‘we’re just visiting friends.’

‘Well, you mind you tell them too. I won’t have anyone disturbing my Roberta.’

They left her cooing over the cat and worked their way around the back of the building.

A small playground enclosed six youths in its tall cage. Two of them were swaying listlessly on the swings while the others talked to one another in a huddle by the merry-go-round.

‘Selling their funny smokes and pills,’ commented Shining with a smile.

The youths looked up as he and Toby passed but spared them little interest.

Heading up the rear stairwell, Toby was impressed again by the fitness of his superior. Shining took the steps two at a time, showing no shortness of breath as he reached the second floor and began to stroll out along the balcony.

‘Hello again,’ came a voice from one of the windows.

Shining stopped and smiled at the elderly gentleman beyond the glass. He was a small, rotund man, slowly working his way through a sideboard of washing up, his woollen tank-top damp with spilled suds.

‘Haven’t seen you along here in a few weeks,’ the man said. The English accent was impeccable but Toby’s ear was sharp enough to pick up the man’s Russian origin.

‘Things have been busy,’ said Shining. ‘You know how it can be.’

‘Oh, I remember – but that’s all in the past for me.’ The old man propped the window wide open and returned to his chores. ‘Nowadays this is as busy as I get. My daughter bought me a machine last year. I try to explain to her that I don’t want it. If the machines take over all my jobs what will I do with my days? Sit watching them as they go about the things I used to do myself? That seems like death to me.’

‘You may well be right,’ said Shining, ‘and we’ve both been dodging that for a long time.’

The man laughed and looked to Toby. ‘Who’s your friend?’

‘He’s working with me now.’

‘Still up to your usual tricks?’

‘You know better than to ask,’ Shining replied.

The man chuckled again. ‘Yes, I do,’ he admitted. ‘Well, get on your way, but stop by sometime and share a little of an old man’s time. Why don’t you? We can reminisce.’

‘Neither of our governments would allow it, Gavrill,’ said Shining, ‘and I’m too old to break their rules now.’

‘Like you ever stuck to them.’

Shining said nothing, just smiled and carried on his way. Toby gave the old Russian a half-hearted wave and followed on behind.

‘Who was that?’ he asked.

‘My opposite number in the KGB,’ said Shining, ‘many years ago. Glasnost melted his career away to a cool mist and he defected here. Or so he leads me to believe. I have no doubt someone, somewhere, will still be told I passed by.’

Toby couldn’t help his scepticism. Surely, even if Section 37’s remit was exactly as Shining had stated, nobody else would care? Wouldn’t they all think it as mad as he did?

‘And he lives a couple of doors away from one of your agents?’

Shining smiled. ‘I was the one who handled his defection. When I saw the flat was on the market I requisitioned it. Makes it easier to keep an eye on him – two birds with one train ticket. Why waste shoe-leather?’

Shining knocked on the door of number sixty-three. It was opened in no time at all by a man in the most exceptionally bright floral dress Toby had ever seen.

‘My God,’ the man shouted, ‘you took your time!’

He stepped back inside to let them both in.

‘Keith,’ said Shining, throwing a random cover name at Toby, ‘this is Alasdair – white witch, music blogger and the best female impersonator north of the river.’

From this angle, Toby had a definite issue with that bold claim but he was willing to accept that maybe Alasdair was having an off day. Certainly he was stressed beyond words.

‘Oh, Tim, I’ve been climbing up the walls. He’s been unconscious for hours,’ Alasdair was saying. ‘I popped my head in this morning to find him out for the count in a lump behind the sofa. The cat’s beside herself.’

The flat was dark and cosy, filled with wood and red fabric, the sort of place Edwardians liked to read improving books in.

They walked straight into the kitchen where Alasdair began wrestling with a kettle in an attempt to beat some drinks out of it. The kettle stood fast.

The kitchen cupboards were covered in small blackboards with scribbled grocery lists, doodles and threats to cut off tuna supply to the cat unless ‘it learned to keep a civil tongue in its pernicious head’.

‘Look!’ said Alasdair, taking a breather from the arduous battle with the kettle. ‘He left me a message at some point in the night, God knows when – he gets up at all hours, wandering around the place like a burglar. Though there’s nothing worth stealing unless you like Cava and Dorothy L. Sayers paperbacks.’ He grabbed hold of the worktop and sighed, a sudden burst of stressed panic dissipating into genuine fear and despair. ‘I can’t bear it,’ he said quietly. ‘Every time this happens I think he’s never coming back and it tears the very fucking heart out of me.’

Toby looked at a chalk-written message: ‘Gone fishing. Call Tim if I’m not back by the time you get here.’

Shining put a gentle hand on Alasdair’s shoulder. ‘Leave it to us,’ he said. ‘Tea for four in five minutes. I’ve never let you down yet.’

Alasdair nodded and Shining gestured for Toby to follow him into the lounge.

‘Tim?’ Toby asked. ‘Keith?’

‘Oh, you know what it’s like with names in this business,’ said Shining.

The lounge was a room filled with books and the ghosts of winter fires. A large sofa weighed down with shed cat hair and cushions that had given up the fight was pulled out at an angle. On the floorboards behind it lay a man who might have been dead. His bearded face was slack, mouth open and eyes half-hooded.

Toby felt they needed to call for help – a doctor, an ambulance, people who knew what you did with someone who had collapsed. Instead he was guided to sit on the floor on one side of the fallen man, while Shining, with the first concession to his age Toby had seen, threw down a cushion and lowered himself on to it.

Toby reached for the fallen man but Shining held out a hand to stop him. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Jamie has a special skill and I need to explain it to you before we begin. You won’t believe it, not until you experience it, but you need to know nonetheless.’

The old man straightened his legs as much as the limited space would allow. ‘Jamie is skilled in Astral Projection, which means he sends his consciousness out into a place that is not quite our world. A place that lies just above it. In that state he is open to things: signals, knowledge, impressions that we could not experience here in the hubbub and noise of the real world. Quite simply, he is the best Listener on the books.’

Toby fought the urge to comment. Shining had been right: he didn’t believe what he was being told. After all, you could not simply leave your body and travel elsewhere. Not really. You could dream. And perhaps you could fool yourself into thinking you were doing something more. Something magical. God, Toby wondered, is this bloke having a seizure while we just look on? Again he began to panic. They had to be doing something more constructive than this. He nearly insisted as much but Shining was talking again.

‘More than that,’ he was saying, ‘Jamie can share that journey. He can bring someone else with him. And sometimes that’s what you have to do to get him back. Because the Astral Plane is a dangerous and disorientating place. It’s a shadow of our world and there are things in there, unnerving things, that will do their best to waylay travellers.’

‘Things?’ Toby was struggling terribly now. The natural authority that Shining had held over him, the sense that he was not as mad as his beliefs would suggest… was rapidly diminishing. His words were too momentous for Toby to swallow.

‘Bad things,’ Shining said. ‘But no more than we can handle. Now take his hand.’

Toby reached forward and did so, Shining taking the other.

And then they were somewhere else entirely.

f) Astral Plane, Another London

They were still sat in the flat, but Toby knew he had moved. It wasn’t just the light, as tangibly different as England had felt after his months in the Middle East, but also the smell, or more precisely the lack of it. Perhaps you only become truly aware of your senses when you lose them. The smell of soft furnishings, old books and dust, the ash of the fire grate, the faint tang of disinfectant and the lingering odours of last night’s meal. A tapestry of smells that had clung to the flat, now all gone. The air was empty.

There was no noise either, no distant traffic, no clattering of Alasdair preparing tea in the kitchen.

This was a place where there was nothing. Nothing but the images of familiar things, washed out and turned grey by the light that fell weakly through a window that must look out on another country entirely. A country that, despite all his travels, Toby knew he had never set foot in.

‘Can you feel the shift?’ Shining asked. ‘The change in plane?’

The panic that had been a constant companion to Toby over the last few weeks – perhaps, if he was honest, years – returned in full. He was being forced to accept things he could not understand. All his control stripped away. It terrified him.

He let go of Jamie Goss’ hand and suddenly felt the real world crash back in on him. The sounds and smells had come back tripled after their momentary absence, and he was hit by the abrasive nature of a reality he had always previously taken for granted.

Toby began to hyperventilate and struggled to get to his feet. His heels slipped on the floorboards and he fell backwards, his head colliding with the bookcase and knocking a handful of John Dickson Carr mysteries down onto him.

‘No…’ he gasped through the panicked loss of breath. ‘… Concussion. Something wrong.’

Shining was there, his hands placed gently on Toby’s shoulders, his aged, gentle face insisting its way into his line of sight.

‘Don’t panic,’ he said, ‘you can do this. You are able. Able to do anything. Relax and go with it.’

I don’t want to go with it! But on the tail end of that thought was the voice of his father. A dismissive sneer. ‘Typical Toby,’ it said, ‘panicking at the first sign of trouble.’ But could you blame me? Toby thought. In his mind’s eye all he could see was his father, shaking his head slowly and dismissively.

Damn it, but he couldn’t have that.

His breathing slowed and he nodded at Shining. He wasn’t saying he believed him, but he wasn’t going to panic in front of him either.

‘Let’s do it again,’ said the old man, ‘and this time you’ll be ready. Take his hand and keep hold.’

With clenched teeth, Toby did as he was told.

And they were back in the foreign country that, according to his new Section Chief, lay just above the one he had always known.

He looked around, disorientated by the way that the edges of things blurred as his head swayed from side to side, as if the focus couldn’t hold when he moved too fast for it.

‘You’re in control. This is nothing you can’t do.’ The fact that Shining didn’t phrase it as a question meant the world to Toby.

‘You OK then?’ Shining asked.

‘I’m fine,’ he replied. ‘Well, maybe not fine exactly but… I’m OK. It’s OK.’

‘Good. Now what we need to do is get up and walk around. Can you feel Jamie’s hand?’

‘Of course.’ Toby looked down and only now did he realise that Jamie Goss was not lying between them. Nobody was. And yet he could feel the man’s hand firmly held in his own. ‘Where… ?’

‘He’s travelling,’ said Shining, ‘we’re still connected to his physical body, and through that we are still connected to our plane. Fix on it in your mind. It’s not a physical sensation, it’s not really there in your hand, but mentally, you mustn’t let go. Once we’ve begun to move around here that’s what keeps you grounded.’

Toby nodded, unable to trust himself to speak coherently, not when faced with impossibility after impossibility.

‘So,’ continued Shining, ‘we keep a hold of his hand, but we get up and move around. That’s easy; the hand will stay with us, its mental weight anchoring our palms wherever we go. Try it.’

Toby did so. Getting awkwardly to his feet he walked the length of the lounge and found that his superior was quite right. He could still feel that invisible hand holding his. He could stretch his own hand, move it, even clench it into a fist but the impression of that other hand stayed with him.

‘This is mental,’ he said, ‘utterly, utterly mental.’ Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought. Maybe this is a concussion and right now I’m poleaxed next to Goss in the middle of the floor.

And yet, however logical the explanation felt to him, however comforting, he also knew it wasn’t true.

Shining had also stood up and was looking out of the window, his lined face barely lit by the insipid light that fell through it in this watery world.

‘We have to be quick,’ he said. ‘Time moves slower here and we don’t know what’s happened to him. He won’t have gone far – he’s no idiot – but something has derailed him.’

Outside the window, Toby could see the playground and the drug dealers that used it as their outdoor office. Everything looked just as it should, but, at the same time, wrong, as if seen through a refracting glass.

‘We need to go outside?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Shining replied.

They moved out of the lounge and Toby saw Alasdair, his back to them as he stood in front of the kitchen cupboards.

‘Alasdair?’ Toby asked, but Shining pulled him back.

‘No,’ he said, ‘not the Alasdair we know. A shadow of him, yes, but not someone you want to meet.’

As he talked the Shadow Alasdair extended a finger to the black board and Toby could see the glint of exposed finger bone as it began to write. No hope, it scribbled across the blurred remains of old shopping lists, Lost forever.

‘Come on,’ Shining insisted, taking hold of Toby with his free hand and guiding him to the front door and out onto the balcony.

Outside, the difference between the two worlds was even more pronounced. The silence had the close, dead feel of an empty room rather than the open air. Toby felt that if he were to drop a coin on the stone beneath his feet it would not rebound from the soft, lifeless ground.

Shining led them around to the stairs and they descended to ground level.

‘Ignore the kids,’ Shining said as they moved past the playground. ‘Don’t even look at them.’

Toby couldn’t help but do so. And as he looked at one boy, swinging slowly on his swing, the boy looked up at him and the face within the shadow of the hoodie he wore had the cold, wet look of dead skin. There were no features, just the smooth white, sagging flesh of a blister.

‘I told you not to look,’ said Shining. ‘It’s important.’

So Toby focused on his feet.

‘If you don’t see them,’ said Shining, ‘they don’t see you. Their attention is elsewhere; we’re the ghosts here and we can float by unnoticed as long as we don’t draw attention.’

‘And what happens if we do?’ asked Toby. ‘Draw attention, that is.’

‘You don’t want that,’ Shining replied, ‘the creatures you find here, the shadows; they can be dangerous. They will try to keep you here. However they can. Remember your training and go grey.’

‘Going grey’ in training had simply meant walking unnoticed in a crowd. Toby couldn’t help but feel this was a step further. Toby tried not to imagine the hooded youth rising from his swing and walking towards the wire mesh of his cage. Tried not to imagine that the two of them were now being watched by the whole group as they walked across the terrace towards the communal bins.

He could see a pair of stockinged feet sticking out as they passed. He tried not to look, but nevertheless glimpsed the red mess that was the old lady’s head thanks to the attentions of the tabby cat now busy feeding.

He looked at his shoes again. Felt a wave of nausea building. ‘How do we find him?’ he asked, focusing on the feel of the warm, invisible hand he held. ‘He could be anywhere.’

‘He’s close,’ Shining answered, ‘I know him well enough. I can feel him nearby. Once you get used to doing this you gain an instinct for it, a sixth sense that tells you when a living traveller is there.’

They found him by the gate. Sat on the ground, face pressed against the iron.

‘What are you doing stuck here?’ Shining asked, squatting down and turning Goss’ face towards his. ‘You need to come home.’

For a moment Toby thought this version of the dreamer was as vacant as the one whose hand he held, but then Jamie Goss’ face lit up and he began to speak.

‘I’d like to,’ he said, ‘but there’s something wrong here, something disturbed. I felt it when I first arrived. A contamination. It made me lose my way.’ The man’s eyes went past Shining and Toby, looking towards a darkness massing at the far side of the courtyard – an almost tangible blackness that curled and bubbled within the pale ivy leaves that lined the walls. ‘And now there’s that…’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it before,’ said Shining, turning to look. ‘Some kind of force…’ He looked to Jamie. ‘What is it?’

Jamie shook his head. ‘It appeared the same time you did. I can feel it. It’s powerful. Dangerous. It wants to swallow us whole.’

Shining shook his head and looked to Toby. ‘We’re going to have to do something risky,’ he said. ‘Are you up for it?’

Bizarrely, the old man smiled, as if with anticipation.

‘To hell with it,’ responded Toby. ‘I don’t believe a bit of this so I’m up for anything.’

Shining nodded. ‘Then take Jamie’s hand – this Jamie – in your spare hand and then, when I say run… we run back to the flat. Got it?’

‘And that’s risky, is it?’ said Toby. ‘Am I going to be somewhere else again when I touch him?’

‘No, but the more aggressive our actions here, the more we draw attention to ourselves.’

Toby glanced at the black mass that seemed to be deepening the more they talked. ‘That stuff seems aware enough as it is.’

Shining nodded. ‘You’re probably right, so the only thing we can do is hope we can outrun it. Got that?’

Toby nodded and took Goss’ hand. Oddly, it did not feel real. It had none of the solidity and warmth of the invisible hand he was already gripping. He stared at it and squeezed the fingers. ‘It’s as if there’s nothing there,’ he said.

‘There’s not much,’ Shining admitted. ‘We have the very least of him here until we can drag him back. But it’s enough. Ready?’

‘Ready.’

‘Then run!’

They sprinted back the way they had come and Toby was aware that the black mass was seething after them as they crossed the courtyard. There was a feline screech and the cat that had been dining on its owner jumped onto the lid of one of the bins and hissed at them as they raced by.

‘Keep going!’ Shining shouted. ‘Don’t let anything slow you down!’

Don’t worry, Toby thought, I don’t intend to.

But the sight of the drug dealers, hurling themselves at the chain-link mesh of the play area nearly made him falter. They were like wild animals in a cage, desperate to break free so they could rip and tear at the enemy that was passing by them.

Toby looked away. If he couldn’t see them, then they weren’t there, he decided. Hitting the stairway they began to climb upwards. None of this is real, Toby insisted to himself, even as the pale light began to darken around them. The black mass that wanted to swallow them whole, to turn them to ice in its cold, dark belly, reared up behind them, drawing closer and closer.

They reached the balcony and Toby nearly fell as his leather soles skidded on the smooth surface of the floor.

‘Careful!’ Shining shouted, ‘we’re almost there!’

They crashed into the flat and Shining slammed the front door behind them. The glass immediately became dark as the blackness struck. It was like sudden nightfall.

‘Just a few more steps,’ said Shining, pulling them through the hall as the Shadow Alasdair appeared in the kitchen doorway, a mess of hair and a pitiful howling circle of a mouth that rippled and billowed across the whole of its face.

They entered the lounge and, suddenly, Goss appeared on the floor, opening his eyes and reaching up to them.

‘Now!’ shouted Shining. ‘You can let go!’

g) 63 Sampson Court, King’s Cross, London

They were back in the real world. A dazed but altogether more conscious Jamie Goss sat up between his rescuers.

Alasdair appeared in the doorway, a tea tray in his hand. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘five minutes my arse – an hour more like. I’ve reboiled the kettle twice. I hope you appreciate what I’ve been through waiting for you. The way I suffer…’

Toby couldn’t help but smile. Holding his hands out in front of himself and wiggling his fingers he luxuriated in the solidity of them. He looked over at Shining to find him smiling back.

‘Lesson one,’ his mentor said. ‘You did extremely well.’

Suddenly there was the crackle of radio static and Jamie Goss contorted.

‘What’s wrong now?’ asked Toby, backing away as the eyes of the man they had just retrieved glazed over once more, and he appeared to vomit a mess of shortwave into the air.

‘One thousand,’ came the voice of the radio, impossibly bubbling up from Goss’ throat, ‘five, five, seven, five, five, seven.’ The voice was distant, almost lost beneath a soup of crackle and the crunch of atmospherics.

‘What is it?’ Toby asked. ‘It’s like he’s channelling a radio signal.’

Shining sighed. ‘Time for lesson two.’

CHAPTER TWO: NUMBERS

a) 63 Sampson Court, King’s Cross, London

Tea was poured as if to prove the world was normal. Jamie Goss seemed once more himself as he soothed his face in the steam of a mug of Lady Grey. Alasdair had returned to the kitchen in order to tut and pull angry faces at the dishwasher. He was still too angry to even feign comfort with the rest of them.

‘I’m fine now,’ said Goss, loud enough for Alasdair to hear. ‘Please stop fussing.’

Alasdair muttered something percussive under his breath and continued being angry in another room.

‘I’m fine,’ Goss repeated, this time to Shining and Toby.

‘I’m glad you are,’ said Toby, staring at his mug of tea, ‘but I’m not sure I am.’

Shining looked over to Goss and smiled. ‘He’s new! Isn’t it wonderful?’

‘I give him a week before he defects,’ said Goss.

‘Oh no,’ insisted Shining, ‘not this one – he’s got potential.’

‘And keeps finding himself being discussed as if he’s not in the room,’ offered Toby.

‘I like him,’ said Goss, still insisting on the third person but at least looking Toby in the eye.

‘Well, that’s all right then,’ Toby replied. ‘My future career is assured.’

‘He’s as sarcastic as Alasdair,’ said Goss, ‘but a trifle less flamboyant.’

‘A trifle,’ Toby agreed. ‘Is anyone going to start discussing what just happened or shall we carry on listing my qualities?’

‘I was finished,’ said Goss, ‘so I’m happy to move on.’

He gave a big grin and sipped at his tea, immensely pleased with himself.

Alasdair finally felt calm enough to join them, stomping in and sinking down onto a sofa opposite Goss, from where he could occasionally pull disapproving faces whenever he felt the need.

‘Some people feel sick after their first out of body experience,’ said Shining. ‘Put some sugar in your tea; it seems to help.’

‘I don’t feel sick,’ said Toby.

‘See?’ Shining looked to Goss, terribly pleased. ‘Real potential.’

‘Or a man with high blood sugar,’ Goss replied, glancing at Toby’s stomach. ‘He doesn’t look like he’s a stranger to Snickers.’

‘Perhaps I’ll sit back and enjoy one the next time you need saving,’ suggested Toby.

‘Now, now boys,’ said Shining, ‘let’s try to keep things friendly.’

‘It sounded like a numbers station,’ said Toby, happy to change the subject. ‘The radio broadcast.’

‘Numbers station?’ queried Alasdair.

Toby kept talking. This was one of the few things he was confident about. ‘Shortwave transmissions that feature a string of seemingly random numbers and sounds, universally thought to be a method of transmitting information to foreign agents.’

‘Universally thought?’ Alasdair was aware of the implication of the phrase. ‘As in “not really”?’

‘They had their uses,’ Toby admitted, ‘but the Americans used them a lot more than we did. While some of our broadcasts were genuine, others were an excellent bit of misdirection.’

‘Espionage is all about confusion,’ Shining added. ‘Fill the airwaves with meaningless noise and settle back while the world wastes its time sifting through pointless data.’

‘True. The British intelligence community hasn’t used numbers stations seriously for decades,’ put in Toby. ‘They’re just not practical when compared to the alternatives. Of course, in some ways that means they might be due a comeback.’

‘Just when people decide they’re no longer important, make them important again,’ agreed Shining.

‘You silly boys,’ sighed Alasdair, ‘with your games and your constantly shifting plans.’

‘That’s what makes espionage an art,’ Shining insisted. ‘If we always stuck to well-trodden, mass-agreed policies we’d be much more transparent. But as long as the intelligence services remain a melting-pot of methods and preferences we stay infuriatingly obscure!’

‘None more so than Section 37,’ added Goss, ‘the section people are too embarrassed to even discuss.’

‘With one of the most successful track records, however,’ Shining chuckled. ‘I am the Barry Manilow of spies.’

‘Dear God,’ said Toby, ‘where does that leave me?’

‘Cliff Richard?’ Alasdair suggested.

‘So why did Goss channel that station?’ asked Toby, determined to bring things back on track.

‘It must have been local,’ said Alasdair, ‘he never picks up radio from far afield.’

‘Unless I’m particularly drunk,’ volunteered Goss.

‘Never let him near the vodka on a Saturday night,’ agreed Alasdair. ‘He spews out the on-air chatter from the taxi company on the corner.’

Toby was becoming uncomfortable again, surrounded by this madness.

‘What triggers it then?’ he asked. ‘Drink?’

‘Oh, I have to be pissed to do any of this,’ Goss admitted, ‘or as high as a kite. Anything to shut the conscious mind up for a bit. I barely remember the summer of 2005… The radio stuff seems random. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s strong.’

‘So it could just be random noise?’ asked Toby. ‘Nothing of interest?’

‘Probably not,’ Goss answered.

Shining was clearly unconvinced. ‘I think I’ll be the judge of that.’

b) Piccadilly Line, Northbound for Wood Green, London

‘So,’ said Shining, straightening the crease in his trousers and stacking spare copies of Metro newspapers on the seat next to him, ‘how’s your first day so far?’

Toby wasn’t sure. ‘I haven’t died yet,’ he said after a moment, ‘nor have I completely lost my mind… at least I don’t think I have. Frankly it’s hard to tell.’

The train they were returning on was all but empty now, the commuters safely boxed away in their cubicles and offices. At the far end of the carriage a man stared at adverts for summer holidays and dreamed.

‘You’re very open with your agents,’ Toby said, ‘I take it they’ve had security clearance?’

‘They’re cleared by me,’ Shining replied with a smile. ‘Besides, so much of our line is theoretical, we’re hardly sharing state secrets are we?’

‘You seem convinced,’ said Toby, ‘that the radio signal is important.’

‘It’s more that I’m unconvinced it’s not. You know what it’s like in our trade; you spend half your time dealing with theoretical problems.’

‘What was Goss looking for in the first place?’

‘Oh, he “goes fishing” every couple of weeks, dangles himself out into the void on the off chance. He used to spend far too long out of his head – that’s the problem with people that can travel astrally, the more they do it the harder it can be to stop. The flesh becomes an anchor, an unwelcome weight. I’ve known a couple of “travellers” just unhook themselves from their bodies and never return. God knows where they ended up, floating in the wind…’

Toby felt he had been doing just that for a couple of years.

‘So how do we trace the radio transmission?’ he asked.

‘Ah,’ Shining replied, ‘like all good spies, I have a man for that.’

c) High Road, Wood Green, London

They entered the mobile phone shop beneath the Section 37 office. Its owner was being shouted at by an elderly woman who seemed a hair’s breadth away from mounting an assault on him.

‘It keeps calling Bolivia!’ she was shouting. ‘As if I’d ever want to talk to someone in Bolivia!’

‘Lovely country,’ said Shining, courteously taking her by the arm and leading her away towards the door. ‘Perhaps you should make friends with whoever it is you’re dialling and you could meet up for a holiday romance?’

‘Romance!’ she shouted, spraying the lapels of his jacket with spittle. ‘What nonsense! And who might you be?’

‘Flying Squad, madam. Kindly step outside while we arrest this filthy foreigner for you.’

‘Bang him up!’ she screamed as he closed the door on her. ‘That’s what I like to hear.’

‘Of course you do, you hateful old bigot,’ Shining replied through the glass with a charming smile.

‘Foreigner?’ the owner complained. ‘I was born in Finsbury Park, as well you know.’

‘Just having a little fun, Oman,’ said Shining. ‘Speaking to it in a language it understands.’ The old woman was still loitering on the pavement. He waved her away.

‘Lock the door,’ said Oman, ‘or she’ll be back in. I think she’s escaped from somewhere, she comes in every day.’

‘Have you considered replacing her phone?’ asked Toby.

‘Nothing wrong with it,’ Oman replied. ‘She just doesn’t know what she’s doing.’

‘That’s probably a naughty lie, Oman, my old crook,’ said Shining. ‘I doubt you’ve sold a fully-functioning piece of kit in your life. But as she’s so hateful I applaud your criminality.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with anything I sell,’ Oman insisted. ‘Yours works fine, doesn’t it?’

Shining removed a mobile from his pocket and looked at it as if surprised to have found it there. ‘That’s a very good point – was it stolen?’

‘Very funny. Now, what do you want before I make you eat the bloody thing?’

‘Temper, temper… I need you to locate the broadcast point of a radio signal.’

‘Great. So nothing annoying and time-consuming then.’

‘It gets better. I don’t have the frequency.’

Oman threw his hands in the air. ‘How can I even get started then?’

‘You tell me. I’m pretty sure it’s broadcasting locally, shortwave transmission…’

‘Shortwave? You might as well be asking me to hunt down a pair of kids talking to each other with cans and string.’

‘I know it’s difficult. I wouldn’t be asking otherwise.’

‘Difficult? It’s impossible.’

‘The impossible is in my job description, Oman, and by extension, yours. It’s a numbers station, likely to be broadcasting within five miles of King’s Cross.’

‘Five miles?’ asked Toby.

‘I doubt Jamie would be picking it up otherwise. It has to be close.’

‘That’s still one hell of an area to trawl for a shortwave broadcast,’ said Oman.

‘It is. But you can do it because you’re brilliant and because I’ll pay you well.’

Oman smiled at that. ‘Liar, you never pay me well.’

‘My budget is limited, true. Still, there’s a first time for everything. The first step has got to be picking the actual station up. Is there a way for you to run a scan? It should be easy enough to recognise it – it repeats the numbers one thousand, five, five, seven.’

‘Sounds fascinating.’

‘It may be nothing,’ Shining admitted, ‘but I don’t think so. And after the amount of years I’ve been doing this job, I’ve learned to listen to my instincts.’

d) Section 37, Wood Green, London

Upstairs, Shining took up residence behind his desk. It was then he realised something. ‘We’ll need to get you a desk. I hadn’t thought about that. Dear Lord… they dump you here but they don’t think the whole thing through, do they? It hardly seems right that an intelligence officer should spend his time shopping at Ikea…’

Shining looked around as if something useful might be lurking behind one of the bookshelves. ‘I must have had a second desk once. What on earth did I do with it? And what forms will I need?’ He began ferreting in his drawers. ‘I wonder what department I have to contact to sanction office supplies…’

‘It’s all right,’ said Toby, ‘I’ll sort it. I’d quite like to do something mundane for an hour, just while some of this sinks in.’

‘Fair enough. When you’ve employed whatever arcane skills one has to master to get kitted out, I was going to suggest you did a little reading.’ Shining got up and moved over to the filing cabinet in the corner. ‘I may not be terribly organised about office equipment, but I have kept case studies of everything I’ve worked on over the decades.’ He opened a drawer and leaned on it with a sigh. ‘After all, someone had to – I dare say they burn the copies I send to our noble paymasters.’

He pulled out a large card folder, bulging with paper, and placed it on his desk. ‘That’s the last six months, small beer for the most part: research and speculation. Dive in when you have a moment. Do you mind if I leave you to it? I sometimes find it useful to go for a walk and think things through.’

‘You’re the boss.’

‘Yes, I suppose I am. That’s going to take some getting used to as well. Right then, help yourself to whatever you need. The password for the desktop is written on the corner of the screen. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

Toby waited until he heard the front door close then got to his feet and went over to Shining’s desk.

He sat down and looked at the computer screen. When Shining had said the password was written on it he had imagined it would have been on a sticky note, but Shining had been literal – it was inked neatly on the screen itself in indelible marker.

‘The man’s mad,’ he muttered to himself, tapping the word in. ‘MOCATA’ – it sounded like somewhere in Israel but was no doubt far more esoteric.

He reached for the phone and started the task of trying to get a desk, chair and computer requisitioned. During this typically labyrinthine process of shunted calls, denials of responsibility and more red tape than he would have needed to wallpaper the office, he began to explore Shining’s computer.

This proved harder than he expected.

The computer was like a house that had been hastily abandoned, the documents folder empty but for a handful of bizarre text files that could have no discernible value: half of what seemed to be a short story concerning werewolves, a recipe for clam chowder and a list of books by a man called Dennis Wheatley.

The pictures folder was better populated, if just as baffling. One folder, entitled ‘Sprites’ contained nothing but pictures of trees. Another, labelled ‘Revenant’ was even more dull, offering thirty-nine pictures of an empty room. Toby stared at the pictures, convinced that he must be missing something. He studied the photos, noting the peeling wallpaper, the splintered floorboards, a sagging wicker chair in the corner. But it was a puzzle beyond his ability to solve. As far as he could tell the pictures were just as pointless as they looked.

Toby opened the default web browser and checked the history. There were several Wikipedia articles, covering everything from a small town in Spain to the movies of Oliver Reed. A couple of the links appeared to be for Internet forums and Toby clicked on one. As soon as he’d done it he realised that Shining would probably notice the intrusion if he checked when his account had last been online. Still… who bothered to do that? He guessed that Shining would have stored his login information in the browser and was proved correct. He was logged in automatically and given free rein to wander amongst the black and green neon corridors of UnXplained.net. There were pages and pages of posts about unusual phenomena, from crop circles to UFO sightings, all discussed, debated and flamed by such regular devotees as TheBeast666, RidgeMonster and LuvBishop.

‘Just buried gran,’ wrote Truth99. ‘Hope she stays there people saying that some are walking now drugs in the food scared she might come back.’ If only to bring you some punctuation, Toby thought. The forum members were more forgiving, though GoldDawn’s comment ‘They’re coming to get you, Barbra!’ seemed to have caused a mini bout of Internet rage. The reference was lost on Toby until he scrolled down and discovered it was a quote from a film, but the flaming was familiar enough; there was nothing Internet forums liked more than a good hard bitch at one another.

He checked out some of the other threads, discussion on psychic surgery, poltergeists, mediums… it provided a fairly exhaustive list of all the things he didn’t believe in. He wondered how much his list would change over the next few months. The idea didn’t please him – he enjoyed being narrow-minded. Found it a comfort.

Toby left the forum and decided to search for Shining’s name online. There was nothing.

Toby gave up on the computer. Stuck on hold, waiting while someone in accounts hunted for Section 37’s requisition number, he cradled the phone under his chin and reached for the file of case reports. He began to read.

e) High Road, Wood Green, London

Shining liked to walk on busy streets. It was an act of immersion, listening to the voices, watching the people. He would subconsciously analyse those around him, watching their movements and piecing together what he could of their lives and motivations. It was important that he could read people. That was always the uppermost skill in intelligence: being able to see people for what they were and predicting their behaviour and responses. He had known many in the Service who lived out their lives in the false atmosphere of their departments, a world of data and dust that bred a view of humanity that could never be accurate. People were never that predictable, but a lifelong student of them could make informed guesses.

He marched down High Road, weaving in and out of the crowds that were a reliable mainstay of this strip of shops and businesses.

He cut into the Wood Green Mall, that cathedral of commerce that had consumed the old railway station, thrived and then floundered. It was a perfect microcosm of the busy world outside its walls. An arena of false light and cold tile, shining shop brands and dreamy shoppers. The echoes of conversation and dreary mall radio formed a soup of sound that drizzled over everyone’s heads as they shuffled in pre-planned loops.

He rode the escalators, working the pre ordained circuit around the mall, letting the wall of sound embrace him as his mind wandered elsewhere. Was the radio signal important? Sometimes, synchronicity was nothing but a random hiccup in the chaos; sometimes it demanded your attention. It was possible that Jamie had simply latched on to the signal by accident. Yes, it was possible… but Shining couldn’t make himself believe that, so he would follow the lead until he could be sure.

Having conducted a full circuit of the mall, Shining stepped back out into the street, breathing in the exhaust fumes from the chains of buses that were dragging themselves towards queues of waiting shoppers.

He stood by a street railing and became oblivious of the rush of colour and sound, the squeal of hydraulic breaks, the hiss of opening doors, footsteps on the pavement, chatter, secondhand music leaking from everywhere. Then he opened his eyes and found himself staring right into a face he knew well. The man stood on the other side of the road, mirroring Shining. For a moment they stared at one another, Shining unable to quite believe his eyes. Then, as the bubble of shock burst, he pushed his way through the pedestrians, running to the end of the barrier so he could cross the road. It can’t be, he insisted to himself, just can’t be. All around him, Wood Green fought to keep him from crossing the road. People got in his way, traffic pushed forward, car horns sounded as Shining stepped out into the road regardless of his safety.

‘Watch it!’ someone shouted, their voice punctuated by the squeal of tyres.

Shining ignored them, running between the cars and mounting the other pavement. People were staring at him, something intelligence officers did their best to avoid, but his training was lost to him, swamped by an obsessive need to confirm what he had seen.

The man had gone. Of course he had. How could he have been there in the first place? Looking up and down the street, Shining found no sign of him.

Shining stood a while by the pavement railing, staring at the weathered metal where the man had rested his hands. It was as if he hoped to pick up on the man’s echo, sense a trace of his passing. There was nothing.

Of course there is nothing, he thought. Krishnin is dead.

f) High Road, Wood Green, London

Shining walked into Oman’s shop with such energy he made the racks of peripheral tat quiver.

‘Give me time!’ complained Oman.

‘Actually,’ Shining replied, ‘I’ve had another thought. If I were to give you a precise location, could you tell whether the signal was coming from there?’

‘That would be a little less impossible,’ Oman admitted, ‘which would be a relief.’

Shining gave him the location.

g) Section 37, Wood Green, London

Toby was lost in reams of the typed-up impossible when he heard Shining’s feet on the stairs.

‘Still no desk then?’ said the old man as he entered, hanging up his coat and lowering himself onto one of the sofas with a sigh.

‘You’ve only been gone a quarter of an hour,’ Toby replied. ‘It’ll be months before we get so much as a pencil holder.’

‘Then maybe I should pass some of the time with a little story. During my walk I saw… or possibly I didn’t… something that has shone a new light on things.’

‘I’m glad things continue to be so clear.’

Shining smiled. ‘Let me tell you about something that happened to me when I first joined the Service.’

CHAPTER THREE: NOSTALGIA

a) Soho, London, 19th December 1963

Espionage in the ’60s reeked of boiled cabbage and old rot. It was a grim, tawdry affair that makes even the present day world of paperwork, politics and accountancy seem attractive.

At that time I was still a few months away from a department of my own. My specialist area of espionage had thrived during the Second World War but petered out as the Service focused elsewhere. That said, there was still enough money and enthusiasm to bring me onboard as a sounding post for other sections. You couldn’t move for funding and the obsession with the Russians was at its peak. If someone in the war office suspected our Soviet friends of being able to fly, they would have had a Cambridge graduate on the roof flapping his arms within forty-eight hours.

I operated out of a creaking office building in Soho. I would walk to work through a maze of blue neon and questionable promises. Posters offered glamour that the threadbare carpets and well-worn stages could never live up to. It was a place of honey traps, luring the lustful into dark, sordid interiors where their money would be drained away as surely as their dreams. It couldn’t have suited us better.

The front door of the office peeled like an Englishman on a package holiday. The electric bells to the left offered a life insurance company, a tailor, a travel agency and a film production house. They were all as fake as the pneumatic dancers that jiggled on the advertising poster of the club next door.

Stepping inside, you might have thought you had been transported to a solicitor’s office from Dickens. The entrance hall was a mixture of black and white floor tiles and the sort of dark, dreary wood that feeds on natural light.

The Service was an uneasy combination of confused scholars and old soldiers; each quite incapable of understanding the other. The concierge, George, was from the military school – an aged infantryman who had lost his left arm during the war. He compensated for this loss of mass with a paunch that stretched the buttons of his suit jacket until they threatened to pop. It was the sort of belly you can only gain through liquid refreshment, a sack of digested beer that he hauled around like a camel’s hump.

‘Morning, Mr Shining,’ he would say, looking up from his copy of the Daily Mirror, before offering a comment on the weather. Those meteorological statements had the stiff formality of codewords, shifting alongside the seasons. ‘Fresh as you like,’ he would say during the cold of winter; ‘Damp enough for Noah,’ when it was raining; ‘Bright as a button,’ when the sun shone. If he ever varied from his script I certainly never heard it. He was reliable, old George, as much a part of the fixtures and fittings as the creeping mould or the carpet that did its best to hold the stairs together.

I’d work my way up to the second floor, where I had my office alongside the fake travel agency, its small windows filled with wilting posters of beaches and old monuments.

I had done my best to make the office comfortable, but it was like placing a cotton valance on a bed of nails. The building fought all attempts at pleasant habitation. The windows were draughty and their sills collected dead flies. The wallpaper was damp to the touch and the furniture creaked when you applied weight to it.

On the morning the Krishnin affair began, I had planned to continue observation on a young man who claimed he could trap ghosts. I had little doubt he was nothing more than a delusional unfortunate surrounded by empty tea chests and with an overactive imagination, but dealing with him beat sitting in that damn office.

It was not to be.

‘You busy?’ A moustache poked its way around my door frame. It was luxuriant, that moustache; you could have painted a wall with it in no time. It was attached to Colonel Reginald King, our War Office presence and most upright of the army lot. He wore his previous life like a security blanket: picture of the Queen on his wall and medals in a case – the sort of things you find shoved away in a dull pub corner these days. If he listened to anything other than marching band music he kept the secret well. He had infected the entire top floor with pipe smoke and tubas.

‘Let me put that another way,’ he continued, before I had time to answer, ‘can you put whatever you’re up to aside for a bit? I need you to help me with a thing.’

‘A thing’. This casual attitude towards operations was part of the military affectation. They were quick to insist others stuck to operation classifications and code names but spent their entire careers involved in ‘shindigs’, ‘ruckuses’ and ‘bits of business’. Perhaps it made them sleep better at night, downgrading their acts of murder or terrorism to nothing more than ‘little barneys overseas’.

‘What do you need?’ I asked, but he had already begun to walk off down the corridor, obliging me to follow.

I shoved my paperwork back in a desk drawer, locked it and gave chase as he made his way downstairs.

‘Got a little picture show for you,’ he was saying, his rich voice being sucked up by the stairwell like nourishment. ‘Chap I want you to take a look at.’

The screening room was part of our production house facade, a small cinema filled with tip-up seats grown shiny through use and the ghosts of dead cigarettes. We all smoked in those days – tobacco was as ubiquitous as water and we thrived on it. It kept the smell of the building at bay.

‘Maggie,’ said the Colonel, shouting at a small woman whose head sported a cheap perm and bright pink spectacle frames. ‘Get Shining a coffee, would you?’ He didn’t bother to consult my wishes on the matter; I would accept this token of civility whether I wanted it or not.

She sighed and rose to her feet under the great weight of all that curled hair. ‘Milk or sugar?’ she asked, with the enthusiasm of a woman about to clean up after her dog.

‘Both please,’ I said, knowing that the coffee would need all the help it could get in order to achieve flavour. Those were the days of powdery, instant, light brown flour that managed to look vaguely like coffee when water was added to it but had long given up on tasting like it.

We entered the screening room, the Colonel waving me to a seat as he moved towards the projector.

‘Never know how to work the wretched thing,’ he admitted. ‘Where’s Thompson, damn him? He’s the only one that understands its arcane bloody ways.’

He stepped out for a moment, hunting for Thompson, a pleasant young man whom I hoped would one day come to his senses and find a better career.

I sat and smoked.

I was used to hanging around the place at the casual beck and call of others. I was like a cherished stapler, passed between offices and frequently lost under a pile of expenses claims.

‘Sorry to keep you,’ said Thompson as he entered at the back, which just goes to show how polite he was. After all, it hadn’t been him that was detaining me. ‘Nobody else seems able to work the projector.’

‘I’d have been willing to have a go,’ I declared, ‘but I didn’t want to confuse our superior by showing excessive signs of intelligence.’

‘Certainly doesn’t pay in our line of work.’ Thompson smiled.

‘Ah!’ said the Colonel, once more gracing us with his presence. ‘All set then? Good man, Thompson. Reel on top.’

The film opened with a blurry shot of the Oceanic Terminal at Heathrow. A Vickers V10 was disgorging its passengers onto the tarmac. The camera man was no threat to Hollywood. The lens jerked around until he managed to focus it on one passenger in particular, a middle-aged, dark-haired man who was so bland in appearance he could only be a spy.

‘Know him?’ the Colonel asked as the camera followed its target towards the terminal entrance.

‘Should I?’

‘We think you soon will. Russian, by the name of Olag Krishnin. Our dossier on him is so thin we have to put a paperweight on it to stop the wind blowing it away.’

‘But there’s enough in there to mark him out for special interest?’

‘We think he’s working in a similar field to you.’ The Colonel became evasive; nobody liked discussing my field. I imagine vice squad have the same problem: everybody talking around the subject. ‘He’s published a couple of papers in your line.’

‘Such as?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s all beyond me. Distant viewing or something…’

Remote viewing, I decided. The esoteric spy’s Holy Grail.

‘When was this filmed?’ I asked.

‘A couple of days ago. The Met flagged him up and eventually I got to hear about it.’

I could smell the brandy and cigar smoke of the Colonel’s club. People like him did most of their work via the old boy’s network.

‘Any idea where he’s gone now?’ I asked. It was all very well to show the man getting off a plane, but if the surveillance had stopped there then how was I to know whether he had subsequently got back on one?

‘Turns out he has a house over here, bugger’s been living on our doorstep for eighteen months. Bloody embarrassing, frankly. Our friends in Special Branch have been keeping an eye on him, but they’re getting restless.’

This was normal. Nobody enjoyed the mind-numbing aspects of surveillance and it was a frequent complaint by Special Branch that they had enough on their plate without having to act as watchdogs for us.

‘So I should take over?’

‘There’s no point in just pulling him in,’ said the Colonel. ‘We need to know what he’s been doing here all this time. Keep tabs on him, size him up, give me something to work with.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘give me what you’ve got and I’ll liaise with the boys in blue.’

b) Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, London, 19th December 1963

You couldn’t blame Special Branch for balking at surveillance duty. It was (and is) the most excruciatingly dull business.

Krishnin had taken occupation of a little terraced house just off Farringdon Road. Using their usual persuasive tactics, Special Branch had forced their way into the house opposite. Having been convinced that their cellar was about to fill with sewage unless fixed by the local council, the occupants were now taking a holiday with the wife’s sister in Cornwall. We’d slap a little concrete around once done and they’d be none the wiser.

Their bedroom window gave a good view of Krishnin’s house. My predecessors had shifted a cheap dresser out of the way so that a desk and chair could be placed there, shaded by net curtains.

We made an unwelcome intrusion in that little room of frilled valances and floral wallpaper. A bored copper had been poking around – there was evidence of his nosiness all over the place. I did my best to cover up after him, strangely uncomfortable – given the reason I was there – with intruding into their lives. The bedroom was littered with personality, pictures in frames, pots of half-used make-up, opened letters (which I had no doubt the previous surveillant had taken the time to read). We never think how we might look to others as they poke through these, our private spaces, rooms that are extensions of ourselves.

Nobody had had the opportunity to install listening devices across the road so I was soon left to wonder what point I was serving, sat there staring at a house’s empty windows. I would know if Krishnin left the house or if anyone visited him. As intelligence went this was pathetically thin. The fact that he had been there for some time just made it worse.

It’s not that it was unusual to discover a foreign agent living on our soil – the Russians weren’t idiots; they knew their tradecraft. There were bound to be enemy agents working under cover identities up and down the country (we certainly had a number of our people behind the curtain, after all). Espionage would be plain sailing if we knew everything the moment it had happened. Still, the fact that Krishnin had been present for so long and yet had remained beneath our attention either meant he was up to nothing of any great importance, or he was playing a decidedly long game. One had to assume the latter, of course – spies are paid to be pessimists – but I couldn’t see how our limited surveillance was going to bring us any closer to the truth.

I had hired a private contractor so that I had cover should I feel the need to do anything radical like sleep. He was a burly private detective by the name of O’Dale. He’d acquitted himself well in the war and came vetted for Service use.

He arrived a couple of hours later and immediately started earning his wage by putting on the kettle.

‘This the sort of job where I get to ask questions?’ he said while carrying two mugs into the bedroom. I could have pointed out that he was already doing so.

‘You can ask all the questions you like,’ I told him, ‘but I doubt I’ll be able to answer them. We’re just keeping an eye on someone. Watching pavements and waiting to see if he’s a waste of our time.’

He pulled a chair over and settled in with his tea. I was surprised at his appearance; I had been expecting a functional rock of old tweed and flannel but he was quite the dandy, in a three-piece suit and hat.

‘I’ve done my fair share of this sort of thing,’ he admitted. ‘You lot only call me in on the boring jobs.’ He took off his hat, a perfectly brushed, brown bowler, and sat it upturned in his lap as if he intended to eat nuts from it. ‘I suppose that’s only natural; you’re hardly going to go private with the juicy stuff.’

‘You’d be surprised how little of it is juicy,’ I told him. ‘It’s not the most exciting profession in the world.’

‘You want to try my line of work. Coma patients get more action.’

We agreed a rota that would see the house covered all day and he left me to it, promising to return at six. By then I had decided to attempt something new – you can only look at lace curtains for so many hours before deciding your plans need readjustment.

In those days my list of agents was negligible. Thankfully one of them was exactly what we needed in order to get things moving.

Cyril Luckwood was a strange little man. He worked for the post office, shuffling and sorting mail. An undemanding job that suited him. It gave him time to think and Cyril had always been a big thinker. Whenever I saw him he had stumbled on a new idea, from an innovative design for vacuum flasks to using bleach to run car motors. Nothing ever came of these ideas. For Cyril it was all about the dreaming. He was a man that liked to solve problems people might not be aware existed.

I met him in a little pub called the Midnight Sailor, further down Farringdon Road. It was the sort of pub where the carpet was on forty Woodbines a day and the tables felt like they contained hearts of sponge.

‘Now then, Jeremy,’ said Cyril as I joined him at a table he had taken in the far corner, ‘you know all the nicest places.’ To Cyril I was Jeremy; I’ve had so many names over the years.

‘How are you keeping?’ I asked him.

‘Can’t complain. Margery is barely talking to me but that’s hardly unusual. I think it’s the lino that’s got her wound up?’

‘The lino?’

‘In the kitchen. I cut a whopping great square out of it because I wanted to test its resistance to heat.’

‘Should I ask?’

‘Probably not. Just a thought I’d had. I might be on to something in the field of culinary insulation, not that this appeases her. Margery is not a woman who is interested in breaking new ground.’

‘But you are.’

‘Exactly.’ He took a sip of his pint and sighed. ‘Enough of my problems. What are you up to?’

‘Surveillance job.’

‘Obviously. Can I ask about him?’

‘You can ask… but if I knew anything I wouldn’t have needed to call you.’

‘Fair enough. I’ll be going in blind as usual.’

‘As usual.’

He shrugged and took another mouthful of his beer. ‘One day you’ll be the death of me.’

‘I do hope not.’

‘I know you do. Which is the reason I stick my neck out anyway. You ask for a lot, but you do it nicely.’

We finished our drinks and I walked him to Krishnin’s house, being careful to take the long way around, coming in from the top end of the street.

Inside our cuckoo’s nest, I led Cyril upstairs to O’Dale, who was sipping without enthusiasm at some soup he had brought in a flask.

‘I could tell you how to keep that hot for days,’ said Cyril, but O’Dale showed the idea as much interest as the soup.

‘One more pair of hands is it?’ he asked, looking at me. ‘One of your lot?’

‘I’m a freelancer,’ said Cyril with a smile, ‘like you, I presume?’

‘Not another private lad?’ O’Dale was clearly put out that I might have gone to another agency.

‘No, no,’ Cyril replied, ‘I work for the government. Just up the road in fact. Mount Pleasant Sorting Office.’

‘You work for the bloody post office?’

‘For ten proud years.’

O’Dale didn’t really know what to say to that so he returned to his soup and left the subject alone.

‘Cyril Luckwood,’ said Cyril, holding out his hand in greeting.

O’Dale looked at me again and I shrugged, reassuring: ‘You can trust Cyril.’

‘He officially vetted?’

‘Don’t be a prig,’ I told him. I hated it when agents tried to vie over each other in a nonexistent pecking order. ‘Cyril’s fine.’

‘O’Dale,’ the detective said, returning Cyril’s offered handshake.

‘Pleased to meet you. Do much of this sort of thing?’

‘A fair bit.’

‘Gets you out of the house, doesn’t it?’ Cyril turned back to me. ‘When do you want me to go in?’

‘As soon as we can get you kitted up,’ I told him. ‘There’s no point in hanging around longer than we have to.’

‘You’re sending him in there?’ said O’Dale, clearly not impressed with the idea.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Cyril assured him, ‘I have a rather special skill when it comes to infiltration.’

‘You’re familiar with the concept of “going grey”?’ I asked O’Dale. ‘Making yourself blend into the background, to avoid being spotted by the people you’re observing? Of course you must be in your job…’

‘I tend to find people walk around with their eyes closed,’ O’Dale admitted. ‘It’s surprisingly easy to avoid being noticed.’

‘Well, in our trade it’s a little more difficult, as you tend to be expecting surveillance. In Cyril’s case, he has an advantage.’

‘Who’s Cyril?’

‘The man you’ve just been talking to.’

O’Dale shifted uncomfortably in his seat and I couldn’t help but smile at this proof of Cyril’s abilities. ‘I wasn’t talking…’ He looked around. ‘Hang on… there was… something about Mount Pleasant.’

‘Mount Pleasant Sorting Office,’ said Cyril, stepping back into O’Dale’s eyeline and therefore his attention. ‘It’s where I work. During the day at least…’

O’Dale’s confusion was a delight to watch.

‘Cyril has a natural aptitude for going grey.’

‘Nobody wants to be beneath people’s attention,’ said Cyril, ‘but at least I put it to good use.’

‘What I couldn’t do with an ability like that…’ said O’Dale.

Cyril shrugged. ‘Depends how you feel about reminding your wife who you are every morning. Not that she’s slow in deciding how she feels about me once she’s remembered…’

‘So you’re just going to walk in there?’ asked O’Dale.

‘And plant these,’ I said, holding up a selection of microphones and transmitters. If all went well we’d have the whole place wired up by the time Cyril had finished.

Cyril packed the equipment into a large satchel (‘discreet recording equipment’ was anything but in those days) and pulled a balaclava over his head. ‘The less they have to focus on, the better,’ he explained.

He walked downstairs and I wished him luck at the front door.

I climbed back upstairs and moved to the bedroom window where I could watch Cyril cross the road and walk up to the front door of Krishnin’s house.

‘He’s actually going to knock on the front door?’ asked O’Dale.

Cyril did just that before stepping to one side. After a moment, Krishnin opened the door and I got my first good look at him in the flesh. The blandness he had conveyed on the film footage was less in evidence here. Some people wear their distinctiveness deep beneath the skin. It’s only when you really pay attention that you catch something in their eyes, the set of their mouth, the way they carry themselves. Krishnin was a spy to his core: an interesting man buried deep inside a boring one.

He stepped out of the doorway, moving along the short path to the street, looking up and down to see if he could catch sight of whoever had knocked. The moment he had cleared the door, Cyril stepped inside and vanished from sight.

‘That’s our boy is it?’ asked O’Dale, pointing out of the window at Krishnin.

‘It is indeed.’

‘Doesn’t look much.’ He rubbed his hands on the shiny legs of his slacks, no doubt missing being able to punch things now he was a civilian.

‘Don’t be so sure,’ I replied. ‘He strikes me as a man who would surprise you.’

O’Dale scoffed. ‘That’s what you lot always think. We’d have an end to the bloody Russians if everybody stopped staring through binoculars and scribbling on foolscap, and pulled a trigger once in a while.’

‘I’ve never shot anyone in my life,’ I told him. ‘I hope I never have to.’

I had made the ultimate admission of worthlessness to O’Dale, who sighed and returned to the newspaper he’d been reading. I felt no need to defend myself. I didn’t think killing was something to take pride in.

I occupied myself with setting up the receiver and recording equipment. At a flick of the switch, the awkward silence had been replaced with the sound of Russian conversation.

‘I thought you said you didn’t have any listening devices set up?’ remarked O’Dale, folding his paper and leaning forward in his chair to listen. He sighed, rubbing at his temples. ‘Hang on… oh yes, that little man took them in with him.’ He looked up at me. ‘How do you work with him? He’s so easy to forget.’

‘I think I’ve built up some kind of receptiveness,’ I admitted. ‘I know him so well now that I can always hold his presence in mind. Isn’t that always the way? Once you’ve really noticed something you see it all the time?’

‘Like red cars.’

‘Sorry?’

‘You notice there are a lot of red cars on the roads, then you can’t stop seeing them. Everywhere you look, red cars.’

‘Yes, selective attention. The brain is assaulted with information all the time. Once it decides to fixate on one particular thing it seems to find it everywhere. It’s the same root cause as coincidence: you don’t notice how many times coincidences don’t happen, just when they do.’

I was listening to the Russian conversation. Krishnin was sharing the house with at least one other man.

‘We need to find out who that is,’ I said to O’Dale. ‘If you get the chance to photograph him going in or out, we can try to pin him down.’

‘I know my job, lad,’ O’Dale replied. ‘My Russian may be a bit rusty, but it’s serviceable. Though I may miss the finer detail.’

‘Don’t worry, I can review the recordings. At the moment they’re just talking about who was at the door. The man we don’t know is of the opinion it’s local kids playing, Krishnin is too paranoid to believe it.’

‘Sensible. No spy worth his salt would be that easy to fool.’

‘As long as he doesn’t notice Cyril we’ll be fine.’

‘But if they end up looking right at him…’

‘He has to avoid their eyeline. I tell you it’s fine – he knows his job.’

‘You wouldn’t catch me risking it.’

The conversation was quiet and it was hard to pick up everything. Wherever Cyril had left the microphone it was too far away from the men to provide perfect coverage. That was par for the course and acceptable: Cyril was a compromise who was never going to be able to match the placement and precision of an advance team working an empty house.

The main thrust of the conversation concerned another base of operations at a warehouse. I made a few notes about it, trying to narrow down its location. I didn’t have a great deal to go on: it was on the river, not overlooked, central enough to be practical but hidden enough to be private. Finally, the stranger made reference to Gainsford Street. That suggested Shad Thames. Cyril had changed the game in our favour.

He should have been back with us by now. It was possible he would have to wait before leaving, picking the optimum moment when he could walk out without drawing attention to himself. But the longer he was there, the greater the chance of being exposed.

‘If he’s not back in ten minutes, we may need to set up a distraction,’ I said. ‘Buy him enough cover to be able to slip out.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Nothing at the moment,’ I confessed, moving back over to the window. ‘If all else fails, one of us will have to go and knock on the door.’

‘Compromising our cover. Fat lot of good either of us will be for surveillance once we’ve drawn attention to ourselves.’

‘Let’s hope it’s not necessary.’

Suddenly the voices on the radio had become raised. The stranger shouting, the sound of a chair spilling over.

‘What’s happening?’ O’Dale asked, jumping to his feet.

‘He says he saw someone,’ I replied, waving at him to be quiet so I could pay attention.

Everything went silent. I could hear the faint sounds of footsteps, presumably the two Russians on the move, checking the house.

‘We’ve got to get over there,’ I decided. ‘To hell with the cover.’

‘Think about it,’ O’Dale said, grabbing my arm. ‘We need to continue surveillance. If both of us go storming over there, we’re blown.’

‘If they snatch Cyril, it’s blown anyway.’

‘No. He’s blown. Not us. You need to think of the bigger picture.’

I was only too aware that I was having my job dictated to me by the hired help, but I was panicking.

‘They’ll kill him,’ I said, more to convince myself than O’Dale.

‘If they’re up to something serious they could end up killing many others. The only way we’ll find out is if we keep our cool and continue surveillance…’

‘He’s right,’ said a voice from behind me. I turned to see Cyril standing in the doorway. ‘Besides, whoever it was that’s set them panicking, it wasn’t me. I’m far too good at my job for that.’

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘What was meant to. I went in, kept to the shadows and avoided any direct contact. Our man is talking to another Russian, a stunted bear of a man, if you’ll forgive the cliché. They were both far too immersed in their own business to take any notice of me. I didn’t risk going upstairs. Old houses are noisy; couldn’t risk any creaking floorboards. There’s a bug in the hallway, the kitchen and just inside the main sitting room. I couldn’t go too far in without risking entering their line of sight, but it should pick up what they’re saying.’

‘We’ve got them loud and clear,’ I confirmed.

‘I left via the back door,’ Cyril continued. ‘They’ve chosen the place well – the back yard is surrounded by high walls.’ He fingered a hole in the knee of the left leg of his trousers. ‘As you can guess by the state of me after managing to climb over them.’

‘Stuff the walls,’ cut in O’Dale, anxious to get back to the point. ‘Who was it that they went chasing after if it wasn’t you?’

‘Couldn’t tell you.’ Cyril shrugged. ‘Maybe if you listened to them rather than me?’

I turned up the volume on the transmitter. Krishnin and friend had returned to the main room, their voices picked up once more by the bug Cyril had left. They were not alone.

‘Another Russian?’ asked O’Dale.

‘Makes no sense,’ said Cyril. ‘Why would they be spying on their own?’

The latest Russian’s voice raged loud until a solid slap brought a sudden quiet. That moment of peace held, then Krishnin started talking. I translated. They were uncomfortable words, words that hurt in my mouth as if I were chewing stones.

‘He’s asking him how much he heard, who he’s working with, if there’s anyone else with him…’

There was a scream, a response to a physical attack we could only imagine. All three of us flinched.

Then came the rattle of metal against metal and a crash as something – I pictured a drawer of cutlery – was dropped on the table.

‘Sounds like they plan on getting creative,’ said O’Dale, getting to his feet. ‘If it’s all the same to you two, I’m going to clock off. I don’t need to listen to a man being tortured, I’m more a Light Programme sort of chap.’

‘I’ll be going too,’ said Cyril, ‘unless you need me to do anything else?’

I shook my head. ‘You’ve done all we need for now, thank you.’ I patted him on the shoulder and turned to O’Dale. ‘I’ll see you in a few hours.’

He nodded and both men made their way out of the room, leaving me to the sound of metal on flesh.

c) Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, London, 20th December 1963

Morning found me jaded and brittle. Listening to the sound of a man being slowly tortured to death was my real introduction to the dirty business of espionage. Intelligence work includes being able to witness horror in the hope that what you learn makes you stronger. It is not a noble business, but almost certainly a necessary one.

When O’Dale reappeared he brought a brown paper bag and two steaming cups of takeaway tea.

‘I didn’t know how you took yours,’ he said, ‘so I told them to throw everything at it.’

The bag delivered a pair of bacon and mushroom rolls, impossibly perfect and indescribably delicious.

‘How’s our friend?’ O’Dale asked.

‘Krishnin’s colleague took a dead body away a couple of hours ago.’

O’Dale acknowledged that with a nod, then left the subject alone. ‘You learn anything of interest?’

‘Krishnin’s definitely active over here – he refers to an operation codenamed “Black Earth”.’

‘Sounds charming.’

‘Sounds lethal. I’ll need to report in.’

‘Fill your boots, I’ve got it covered for the next few hours.’

Leaving O’Dale in charge, I stepped out of the house. The fresh air completed the work of the tea and sandwich; I was almost human by the time I reached Soho.

The Colonel was not in the best of moods. There was a flap on somewhere else and it was difficult to secure even a fraction of his attention.

‘Black Earth?’ he asked. ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I’m hoping I’ll be able to find out.’

‘You sure you understood him correctly?’

‘My Russian’s excellent. That’s what he said.’

The Colonel stepped over to the door of his office and began shouting along the corridor, demanding the file of someone under the codename of ‘Otter’.

‘And you say we’ve got a dead body dumped somewhere?’

‘Yes. I’d have followed him to find out where, but I didn’t want to leave the post unmanned.’

‘Someone’s going to get a surprise when they take the bins out. Oh well, at least the night’s not a total failure…’

‘I need to look into the warehouse,’ I said, hoping to get the conversation back on track.

He nodded.

Maggie appeared in the doorway. ‘Otter’s file. You need anything else?’

‘Aspirin and coffee. For God’s sake put your back into it this time. I swear the last cup tasted of nothing more than the china it was poured into.’

She sighed and walked off, not gracing him with a reply.

After leafing through the file, he looked up at me.

‘Off you go then,’ he said. ‘Give the warehouse a once-over.’

‘I could do with a few more hands,’ I ventured. ‘I can’t run a surveillance operation and go wandering around the docks for the day. A couple more men would make all the difference.’

‘Can’t spare them,’ the Colonel said. ‘You’ll have to manage. Bring me something more concrete and I’ll see what I can do.’

I knew better than to argue, but I was still fuming when I left the building.

d) Shad Thames, London, 20th December 1963

These days, Shad Thames has become a plasticised representation of the place it used to be. A place of delicatessens and wine bars with walls so clean you could safely lick them. Back then it was in its death throes. A once-vibrant world of warehouses, the creak of ropes, the splinter of wood, the shouts of industry, had been turned into a ghost town by bombs and fickle economics. Everywhere you looked there were echoes and memories, crumbling bricks and shuttered doors. Here and there dwindling groups of workers fought on, beleaguered soldiers in the battle against free trade. I worked my way along the narrow streets, trying to look like a man with a purpose. Invisibility is all about confidence: act as if you own the place and people will rarely give you a second thought.

Given what we had heard, Krishnin’s warehouse had to be somewhere nearby. I had to hope that I’d pin it down before I became such a familiar face in the area that my usefulness as an intelligence officer would be lost.

Nowadays I’d drag in a charming young lady called Eleanor. As a diviner she’s second to none: she’d have picked up its location the minute she stepped off the Tube. But back then we relied on shoe leather and amateur dramatics.

Circumnavigating the boring details of how I found it – it was tedious enough doing it the first time, without reliving it – I found myself facing what I had decided was my best bet. The place was trying its hardest to seem as abandoned as those around it but failing in important details: the hinges on the main gate had been recently oiled and the chains that secured it, were new; the wooden struts that boarded up cracked windows were tight and secure. Abandoned buildings shrug up their secrets, and wear their ignoble state with carelessness. This was a building that wished to avoid attention and keep out intruders. It loomed on the street, an ancient wooden hoist jutting out above its gate like an old gibbet.

I took care to give it minimal attention and walked back to the river. I had a couple of hours before I was due to replace O’Dale, so there was time to explore further. Still, broad daylight was no friend to housebreakers, so a little extra insurance seemed in order. I walked until I came upon a phone box and put a call through to O’Dale.

‘Just wondering who was home,’ I asked.

‘Father’s currently reading the riot act,’ O’Dale replied, keeping his answer vague as per protocol. ‘His naughty boy is complaining about having had to take out the rubbish.’

‘Then he’s too busy to worry about me at the moment.’

‘I would have thought so. Still, who’s to say when he might want to pop out and do chores?’

‘Understood.’

I put the phone down and made my way back towards the warehouse. I had no idea how many men might be over here under Krishnin’s control but at least he was absent for now.

During the five minute walk I came up with a plan.

While the warehouse I was interested in was faking its emptiness, the building next door wasn’t. It truly was a crumbling ruin of red brick and corrugated metal.

I stood in a doorway, several feet away, pretending to do up my shoelace but really ensuring I was unobserved as I walked the last few steps and slipped past the broken door and into the abandoned building.

The air inside was a soup of smells: captured carbon from old fires, urine, dust, rot and, somewhere in the recipe, the faint scent of stale flour. The light creeping in from fractured windows fell in thin beams, patterning the floor like scattered white poles. The shadows were dense enough to hide anything but I moved as quietly as the dusty concrete floor would allow. I reached the side of the building that was adjacent to the real source of my interest, and ran my fingers across the old brick, hoping to pick up a sense of what might lie beyond.

As I inched my way along, keeping my ears close to the wall on the off-chance of hearing signs of occupation, I made a potentially fatal mistake. You know that in our line of work we need to cast the net of our attention wide. If we focus on any one thing we’re likely to miss something important. As I centred my entire attention on the building next door I ceased to pay attention to the one that I was actually in.

All around me, shifting from those deep shadows and pulling themselves free from beneath their junk castles, the tenants of that warehouse had realised they had an intruder in their midst. I had considered the place uninhabited but it was not. I should have known that any building so easily accessed would draw in the homeless.

Turning around I saw several indistinct shapes shuffling their way towards me. Their humanity was hidden beneath layers of shabby clothing and shadow. For a moment I was struck by the thought that whatever I had aroused was something unearthly. The sign, no doubt, of reading far too much M.R. James. It was only as one of them stepped close enough for me to catch the shape of the eyes and mouth within the dank hood of their hair that I realised what I was looking at.

‘Terribly sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m from the council, you see. They send us to check these places out from time to time.’

They kept advancing.

‘Just for the sake of safety, you understand,’ I continued. ‘The last thing anyone needs is for one of these old walls to come tumbling in and crush some poor chap to death.’

If they had any interest in what I was saying they showed no sign of it and I was once again struck by the impression that what was surrounding me was more – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say less – than simply a gang of homeless people.

The closest was nearly on top of me so I moved to one side, determined to keep a little space between us. It was a mistake, as I was now further away from the door and had cut off any chance of a quick escape.

‘There’s no need to worry,’ I said. ‘I’m not here to turf anyone out. Who am I to deny a man a roof to keep the rain off, eh? You’re welcome to the place; it’s no concern of mine.’

I continued to back away, stuck now with only one route of retreat, moving further and further away from the door.

And still none of them spoke. Just continued to move towards me, vacant and yet somehow hostile.

I tried one last attempt at friendly exchange, raising my hands in an amiable fashion. ‘I’ll just leave you to it, shall I? I’ve seen everything I need to, no need to disturb you further.’

The man closest to me reached out towards me and I was struck by the length of his dark and uneven nails. They looked like weapons. My nerve broke and I tried a run towards the main door, but by now I was too hemmed in. I turned on my heels and ran further into the warehouse, hoping there would be a rear exit I could use. Light pushed through gaps in the windows but it revealed so little of the floor that I was convinced I would stumble at any moment. The deeper I ran the darker it became, and after a few panicky seconds I suddenly realised I could see nothing at all. But what else could I do but keep moving? I could only be a few feet away from the far wall and, if I moved carefully and quietly, the darkness could even be an advantage. If I couldn’t see them, how could they see me?

I pushed on, but more slowly now, one hand held out in front of me to stop me walking straight into the far wall. Why was there no light at all? Surely there had to be some gap between the boards that covered the windows? There was nothing. And, as I slowly advanced, I realised that the lack of light wasn’t my only concern. Considering how far I had come there was no way I couldn’t have reached the other side. A warehouse might be large but this one seemed endless. I stopped walking.

I checked behind me and I was presented with an identical view; there was now no sign of the light from the front of the building either. I was surrounded by darkness. I tried to catch the sound of pursuit, a shuffled foot or two – there was nothing. Either the homeless gang had given up on me or – and this was beginning to feel more likely – I had gone somewhere that they were now unable, or unwilling to follow me.

Where my story goes next will be hard to believe, but I make no apology for it. Mine has been a career full of impossibilities and I could discuss barely a single day of it without stretching your credulity.

About how I could have stepped from that warehouse by the river to this indefinable place I will, for now, simply say: the world is a thing we perceive subjectively; sometimes geography is a state of mind. A good deal of what we refer to as magic comes down to perception. Altering a state of reality is difficult – the laws of physics are not easily broken, but altering the subject’s perception of reality is relatively simple. To put it briefly: I was by no means certain I had left the warehouse, but I was convinced that someone was trying to make me believe so. Continuing to walk on, therefore, was simply giving in to that. I could spend all day trying to reach the other side of the building and would never do so. The only way out of this situation was to pause, take stock and try to see the world how it really was. Sounds easy, but some people have been trying, and failing, to do that for years.

I sat down, closed my eyes and worked at trying to imagine the warehouse around me. This was hard enough as I hadn’t given the place much attention. It had been a means to an end, not important in itself. It occurred to me that my perceptions might well have been interfered with from the moment I had crossed the threshold. That army of homeless, rearing up from the shadows to attack me. Had they even been real?

I tried to build a picture of the warehouse in my mind, imagining the front wall, its loose door, the pattern of the shutters on the windows. I might have thought I had been ignoring the place, but we always take in much more than we realise. Unimportant details litter our brains – things we’ve barely glimpsed linger in our memories. I recalled the dusty concrete floor and the piles of leaves and dirt, blown in and left to turn crisp in the dry, sheltered air. The abandoned timber, rat-chewed and warped. The remains of old fires, blackened on the ground like silhouettes left by a nuclear strike. I recreated the entire building in my memory, cramming in every detail I could. I kept my eyes closed, reached forward and rubbed my fingers on the floor. I lifted up my hands and rubbed the fingers slowly together, feeling the grit and dust crumble on my skin: details.

Tentatively, I opened my eyes and looked upon the empty warehouse once again. There was no sign of the homeless army, a figment of my imagination as much as the impenetrable darkness. I had fallen into some trap, an echo left for the unwary snooper.

I checked my watch. Somehow, an hour had passed.

Was Krishnin still on Farringdon Road? Had I lost the window of opportunity that had been open to me? Common sense demanded that I retreat and return later, but I was loath to give up. Leaving there now felt like failure. But leave I did. Whatever Krishnin was working on in the adjacent building was important enough to require protection. I needed to plan this properly, do it right. Otherwise none of us would be any the wiser and I could very easily join that unknown Russian somewhere in an unmarked grave.

CHAPTER FOUR: CONVERSATION

a) Section 37, Wood Green, London

‘You can’t just leave it there!’ Toby shook his head in exasperation.

‘I can for now,’ Shining replied with a smile. ‘The day’s dragging on and I have business to attend to. We’ll continue this tomorrow morning, in situ.’

‘In situ?’

‘I want you to meet me at London Bridge – shall we say half past nine? It’ll all start to make sense then.’

‘I doubt that.’

Shining got to his feet. ‘Don’t underestimate yourself. Do you know my last member of staff tried to jump out of the window on her first day? We’d only had one briefing… I assume she had an innate fear of pixies.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘Of course I am.’ Shining shrugged on his coat. ‘Make sure you lock up on your way out.’

b) Flat 3, Palmer Court, Euston, London

Toby was almost surprised to find himself back home. His mind had been so occupied as he travelled back from the Section 37 office that he’d been oblivious to his journey. Even now, leaning back against the front door of his flat, he didn’t quite know what to do with himself.

Did he want food? A drink? A few lazy hours in front of the telly? It all seemed inappropriate. Like a cheerful song at a funeral. Real life was something that was hard to settle into when you worked in intelligence. Extended periods abroad, a name that changed as often as the shirt on your back. He might have hoped that his new posting could at least have afforded him some stability, but no, it had offered a step away from ‘real life’ even further than ever before.

He sat down and waited for a useful thought to come to him. Something that didn’t involve astral projection, numbers stations or mad Russians. Before anything came Toby was distracted by an envelope on his coffee table. It was an envelope he had never seen before and it had his name on it. This is exactly the sort of thing that makes intelligence officers run for the front door, make an emergency phone call and change their address. Someone had been in here in his absence, been here and left him a message.

He got up and made a circuit of the flat, checking for signs of disturbance. There was nothing – which didn’t mean the place hadn’t been turned over, just that the people who had done it were good at their job. But why cover up any sign of your presence and then leave a letter proving you’d been there?

Toby went to the kitchen and fetched a pair of rubber gloves from beneath the sink. He pulled them on, retrieved the letter and brought it back into the kitchen where the light was at its brightest. He sniffed the envelope, held it up against the neon strip in the ceiling, examined it as closely as he could. It seemed to be nothing more than it appeared: a note in an envelope. His name was handwritten, another casual touch.

There was little else to do but open it. Inside was a folded sheet of writing paper, off-white, generic. The sort of thing you could buy from a high street stationers were you one of the few people who could be bothered to write a letter anymore.

He unfolded it. Written across the sheet in plain capitals was the message:

‘AUGUST SHINING WILL GET YOU KILLED. HE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED. LEARN THE TRUTH OUTSIDE EUSTON STATION. 20.45.’

Toby folded the letter back up and replaced it in the envelope. He dug a freezer bag from one of the kitchen drawers, placed the note inside it and put it in his pocket. He looked at the clock on the microwave. Half-past six. Just over a couple of hours until his anonymous visitor wished to meet him. His evening now had purpose.

c) Hampstead Heath, London

Shining took his time going up Parliament Hill, not because he was unfit but because he liked to savour it. He strolled, he allowed himself a moment to watch the view change, watch London slowly reveal itself as he climbed higher. He nodded at the dog walkers and the romantic couples, stepped aside as the joggers cut past him, even took the time to sit on a bench and sip his way through a takeaway coffee. He was, for all the world, a man with time on his hands spending it in a calm and pleasant way. Nobody even noticed as he reached beneath the seat of the bench and ran his fingers along one of the struts, feeling his way towards the packet he knew would be there. Nobody, that is, except the old woman who sat down next to him, a colourful confection of brightly coloured wool and a startling pink cap.

‘It’s not there August, darling,’ she said. ‘I got bored hanging around so it gave me something to do.’ She handed him the packet. It was a narrow manila envelope containing a couple of sheets of paper. The envelope was unsealed.

‘You opened it?’

‘Of course I opened it, I could hardly pass the time just looking at the envelope could I? It’s not very interesting I’m afraid, just a lot of nonsense about portents. You know what he’s like.’

‘An incredibly gifted seer?’

‘A tubby old astrologist who should stick to writing waffle for local newspapers: “Darkness ascending through the House of Mercury bodes ill for financial matters in the East.” He laughs at you, I’m sure of it.’

Shining stared at the old woman and sighed. ‘You really shouldn’t stick your nose in, April, dear. I’d hate to regard you as a security risk.’

‘A security risk?’ she laughed, pulling a cigarette case from out of the pocket of her heavy woollen jacket. ‘Me? Darling boy, you know I’m only after your best interests – what else are big sisters for?’

‘Fading into dementia and leaving their brothers to get on with their job?’

‘Cheeky bugger. My mind’s as sharp as it ever was.’ She looked around, sneering at a pair of cyclists as they rode past. ‘This place has gone to the dogs, no character anymore. It’s all Lycra and kites. Once upon a time you could walk up here and rest assured that everyone you saw was about important business, spies doing dead letter drops, cabinet ministers shuffling off into the bushes to get their bottoms filled.’

‘I’m fairly sure that’s still a constant.’

‘Nonsense, it’s all boy bands and soap stars these days.’ She patted him on the arm. ‘There’s not an inch of quality cock left in this city.’

‘As if you’d know.’

‘True. My groin withers into memory, a place of youthful dreams now barren and lost.’

‘Can we please change the subject?’

‘With pleasure. Got anything interesting on?’

‘As if I’d tell you.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a stick in the mud. I’d only hear it from someone else anyway. Nobody minds their tongue around silly old biddies like me – we might as well be invisible.’

‘Nobody who has met you would agree with that.’

She smiled. ‘You’re so lovely. What’s this I hear about a new boy in the office?’

Shining sighed. ‘How could you possibly know about that already?’

It was always a source of exasperation. Having spent most of her life working for one governmental department or another, April had got to the position where she had everyone’s ear.

‘I told you, darling, I know everything. What’s he like?’

‘You tell me, if you’re so well-informed.’

‘Well, his record’s a bit patchy. Some fuss in the Middle East, suggestions of incompetence.’

‘He’s not incompetent.’

She laughed. ‘Oh you’re such a sweetie. He’s only been with you five minutes and you’re fighting his corner. I do love a man of honour. And your chap was also flagged up as suffering from shell shock.’

‘PTSD, dear. Nobody says shell shock anymore.’

‘Don’t pick hairs, darling. My point is: the poor boy’s broken.’

‘Aren’t we all in one way or another? We are all sticks, whittled away by our experiences, some of us just get whittled more than others. He’s stronger than you think.’

‘As ever, I’ll trust your judgement. I’ll pop in and see you both tomorrow.’

‘Please don’t. I’d rather you didn’t scare him off.’

‘Scare him? Me? If he can stomach your ghosts and ghoulies, he can certainly tolerate a harmless old lady.’

‘No doubt, but can he tolerate you?’

‘I don’t know why I love you.’

‘It’s certainly not through encouragement on my part.’

They sat in silence for a few moments, April Shining sending delicate clouds of menthol cigarette smoke out onto the breeze. ‘Things feel…’ she paused, ‘important at the moment.’

‘Don’t they always?’

‘No, they don’t. You know what I mean. Years of messing around, chasing concepts and filling your days with trivial concerns…’

‘My work is important.’

‘Oh darling, I know that, but when was the last time something truly catastrophic happened? How long has it been since you held the world in your hands?’

Shining sighed. ‘A few years.’

‘And now you have someone new.’ She folded her arm around his. ‘It’s not a moment too soon if you ask me. The air’s electric, the wind’s changing. You’re about to be a very busy boy.’

d) Euston Station, London

Toby made a point of being early. He was less interested in the person who had left the note seeing him than he was in seeing them. It might be his best hope of staying ahead of the game.

He had raided his wardrobe for clothing that was neither conspicuous nor something he would frequently wear. He knew disguise wasn’t a matter of false beards and make-up, but rather a step away from the norm. So, he put aside his regular clothes, the work suits and the favoured shirts. He picked out a stained hoodie that he’d used for painting, a pair of tracksuit bottoms (bought for the gym but never actually used) and a baseball cap he’d picked up in Dubai, desperate to cover a sunburned head. He knew he wouldn’t bear close inspection but, if he kept his head low, his walk casual, he would blend in.

On the off chance that whoever had sent the note was sufficiently organised to have someone watching his front door – certainly what he would have done – Toby went out the back way, past the large rubbish dumpsters and through the rear gate. It was supposed to be kept locked at all times, but it was a rare day the caretaker remembered his keys. Most residents complained about it; Toby had just filed it away as useful.

Cutting through to Euston Road, Toby thought of an extra bit of cover, and darted into the twenty-four hour grocery store to buy himself a pack of low-tar cigarettes and a lighter. He hadn’t smoked since he’d left school, but he’d made a point of being able to feign doing so. Another bit of window dressing to differentiate himself from Toby Greene.

The front of Euston Station was a good choice for a meet. It was enclosed and congested, a concourse of takeaway outlets boxed in by the bus station on one side and the entrance to the train station and Underground on the other. There was nowhere he could stand maintaining a distance while reliably keeping an eye on the whole area. He went into the small supermarket, bought himself a can of lager and took up residence at one of the outside tables. He opened the lager, lit a cigarette and began to watch.

It was half an hour before he was supposed to meet whoever had left the note, but he was sure they’d be early. It was as quiet as the area ever got – in that hinterland between going out and coming home. He hoped the restricted visibility would affect both of them equally. The person meeting him could no more stand back and observe than he could. They would have to be here, moving amongst the listless shoppers, the residents picking up forgotten milk, and the tourists between trains – eating takeaways from Nando’s and topping up on caffeine.

He looked around the quad, assessing the people. A middle-aged man in a cheap suit stood to one side of the automatic doors, sucking on a cigarette as if it were keeping him alive. A young woman paced nervously, obviously fighting the urge to check her watch. If she doesn’t know how late they are, thought Toby, she can still pretend they’re coming. A pair of Japanese students were laughing over a pasty bought from a takeaway stall, pulling it apart gingerly and giggling at the sharp bite of the steam nipping at their fingers. Four girls overfilled a coffee shop table, checking their lives on their mobiles and sharing the results. A pair of bus drivers worked their way through sandwiches with no love in them, just limp ham and wilted lettuce, suffocated by cling film and neglect. An ageing soak sucked enthusiastically at the hole in his can of beer, every mouthful leaking, demanding a wipe from the back of a woolly, gloved hand. A burst of music washed out of the automatic doors as they hissed open to expel a man wearing his headphones loose around his neck. He seemed disappointed when nobody turned to look at him. An elderly couple shared custody of a shopping basket that fought to be free of them as they aimed it towards the entrance to the Underground.

Toby discounted them all.

A young man in a business suit styled in ‘flashy off-thepeg’ made a show of his phone call, a one-sided affair ripping verbal chunks from a mutual work colleague. Toby gave him special attention. A phone call was easy to fake. The man went on Toby’s list of possible targets. He was joined there by a quiet woman who studiously pushed her way through documents on her iPad, scrutinising everything as if it were a revelation. A man in a heavy anorak sat at another table, taking out serious frustration on a paperback thriller. He throttled it in his hands, snapping the spine back with every turn of a page. Toby couldn’t decide if the book’s violence was infecting him or he just hated it. Either that or he was playing too hard at being ‘a man reading a book in public’.

Toby checked his watch. Only five minutes to go before the planned meeting.

He took another sip of the lager and lit one more cigarette, gathering his cover around him as the clock ticked closer to his rendezvous.

A woman entered the quad dressed in standard office uniform, a light raincoat, dark blue skirt and matching jacket. Toby pegged her as a civil servant and immediately focused all his attention on her. She loitered by a takeaway baguette kiosk, glanced at her watch and looked out over the people around her, clearly searching for someone she was due to meet. As her attention swept over him Toby lifted his lager can to his mouth, blocking what little view of his face she might have had. Her gaze passed by him and she looked towards the entrance from Euston Road. She seemed innocuous enough, skin pale from too much office strip lighting and not enough sun. Her brown hair came from a supermarket shelf, and she wore no discernible jewellery. Probably born blonde, Toby decided she was a woman on the defensive in an aggressively male environment, trying to avoid preconceptions. London was full of such women, trying to dismiss their femininity in an environment that might see it as weakness. She certainly could be in intelligence. Despite a series of successful female operatives, the old guard could be a bigoted, patriarchal lot. The only thing that concerned him was that she seemed…

‘Far too obvious?’

He turned to find a woman had joined him at his table. She could hardly have been more different from the one he had been watching: brash in appearance, her hair a violent shade of red with streaks of white, face heavy with make-up and a neck laden down with so many bead necklaces she could have substituted for a grocer’s curtain. Toby placed her in her late forties.

‘Sorry to sneak up on you,’ she said and reached for his pack of cigarettes. She paused while withdrawing one, raising an eyebrow by way of asking permission.

‘Help yourself,’ he said, ‘they’re obviously no use to me.’

‘Now don’t be like that, they were a nice touch. I’m just exceptionally good at finding the people I want to find.’

Patronising bitch, he thought and scooted the lighter across the table to her with a flick of his fingers. He looked over at the civil servant that had caught his eye, watched her greet a man with little enthusiasm – a colleague not a friend – and vanish into the station with him.

‘Thanks for coming to meet me,’ the woman said after lighting her cigarette, ‘I felt sure you would. After a day in Section 37 you’re bound to be curious. It’s not the world you’re used to, is it?’

Toby shrugged. He had already decided to say as little as possible, let her do all the talking.

‘And Shining is hardly the most conventional section head in the Service, though he may well be the oldest…’

The table of girls with smartphones erupted into a brief and universally fake explosion of laughter at a YouTube video.

‘Have you considered applying for another transfer yet?’ the woman continued. ‘You might think that they won’t grant you one but don’t discount it. There are those in the Service who are far from happy to see Section 37 allocated an extra man; you might be surprised at how easily you could be elsewhere.’

Toby remained silent.

‘I see, you want me to do all the talking.’ She smiled. ‘You young officers are so charming; every move comes straight from a manual.’

‘Perhaps I just don’t like being played?’ he replied, his anger finally coming to the surface. ‘If you have an issue with Shining might I suggest you take it up with him direct? Given how few people take him seriously I’m surprised he’s worth this bother.’

‘I take him seriously,’ she said. ‘You’re quite wrong about that. This isn’t about petty, inter-departmental politics, this is about people who stick their noses where they’re not welcome. I met you as a point of courtesy, a polite opportunity for you to step off the field.’

‘Really? In my experience there is very little courtesy in our line of work. If you want me gone then it’s because I’m an inconvenience to you.’

Her smile switched to a sneer. ‘Get over yourself.’ She stubbed the cigarette out on the surface of the table. ‘You’re nothing to us. You’re a silly little child that’s about to get caught up in matters he has no hope of understanding.’

Toby felt his anger suddenly dissipate. ‘If I was nothing you wouldn’t be wasting your time here. You may be good at finding people but you’re a lousy liar. Perhaps it’s you that needs to rethink your career.’

She stared at him for a moment and then stood up and walked away.

Well now, Toby thought, this transfer might be interesting after all.

CHAPTER FIVE: ARCHEOLOGY

a) Shad Thames, London

‘You know,’ said Toby on meeting Shining the next day, ‘I was thinking of offering my resignation this morning.’

‘Really?’ Shining’s face fell. ‘It would hardly have been the first time, but I had hoped you’d stay a little longer.’

They cut through the train station, emerging onto Tooley Street and then moving up towards the river.

‘To be honest,’ Toby continued, ‘I think I was just panicking a little. I couldn’t see what my place was in the section. It was all weirdness, a world outside that which I’d trained for. I couldn’t see what use I would be. I could think of nothing worse than spending the rest of my days watching on in confusion while you explained some new and unbelievable bit of nonsense.’

Shining laughed. ‘So what changed your mind?’

‘I met a woman who tried to convince me I was right, that it was all beyond me. I reasoned she’d hardly be saying it if it were true.’

‘A woman?’ Shining stopped walking. ‘What woman?’

Toby told him everything that had happened the night before.

‘How interesting,’ said Shining, as they continued on their way.

‘I assume it was something to do with that enemy of yours in Whitehall, Sir Robin?’

‘I doubt it, it’s not his style at all. He’d just have threatened to cut your pension.’

‘Great.’

‘Stick with me and you won’t live long enough to claim one.’

‘That’s a relief. So who do you think she was?’

‘No idea – isn’t that lovely? You can’t beat a bit of intrigue. I dare say you’ll hear from her again.’

‘I look forward to it.’

They emerged onto the riverside, went past HMS Belfast and towards the lopsided glass onion of City Hall.

‘For now,’ Shining continued, ‘let’s keep our eyes on the road. I took a gamble yesterday as to the location of the numbers broadcast and Oman has confirmed my suspicions.’

‘Well, that makes things easier.’

‘Actually, probably not; it opens up a whole new can of worms.’

‘Oh good.’

Shining patted him on the shoulder. ‘You’re a new man this morning! Where’s the sullen cynic of yesterday?’

Toby shrugged. ‘He’ll be back soon enough. For now I’m taking the path of least resistance. No doubt I’ll be up to my neck in something utterly impossible before the morning’s out. Until then I may as well just enjoy the walk.’

It was a pleasant day for a walk. The sun was bright, and had brought the tourists out to stare at the water and photograph one another’s fixed smiles.

The two men worked their way along the waterside, past Tower Bridge and on towards the scrubbed, false world of Shad Thames.

‘We love our history with all the soot removed,’ said Shining, ‘Industry as a charming ghost rather than a grunting, sweating, creaking beast.’

The older man moved away from the river and into the tight network of streets.

He stopped in front of an apartment block and stared up at its stone and glass body. ‘How interesting.’

‘If you like Terence Conran,’ said Toby, noting the shop beneath the building. ‘Personally I find it all a bit Emperor’s New Clothes: spindly nothings, the only heft is the price tag.’

‘Hmm…’ said Shining, glancing at a clear Perspex chair in the window. ‘I stumbled upon a real ghost chair once – cost more than a couple of hundred quid to sit in it. I wasn’t looking at the shop, though.’ He stepped as far back as he could, resting his back against the external wall of the building opposite. ‘Look between the buildings. What do you see?’

Toby stood next to him. ‘A bit of industrialist grey with a door in it, staff entrance to the shop maybe? I don’t know – just looks like a join between the two buildings.’

‘Keep looking.’ Shining walked across the road, marched up to the divide between the shop on the right and the clean walls of Cinnamon Wharf on the left. He reached his hands out towards the plain, grey concrete. Then he continued to walk and Toby was faced with exactly what he had predicted only a few minutes earlier: the utterly impossible.

From the young man’s perspective, the narrow stretch of concrete – no more than six feet wide – shimmered and ballooned outwards, changing its appearance entirely. It was a warehouse. Not the spruced-up, rebuilt apartment blocks that now filled the area but an ageing, crumbling, dirty stretch of wood and brick. Once the illusion had been broken, Toby could see it clearly, unable to believe he hadn’t noticed it in the first place. There was an entire warehouse between the shop and the apartment block. Shining reappeared, framed in the large, tatty doorway, having pushed open the double doors.

‘You see it?’

‘I see it.’

‘Come on then, if you’re going to accept the impossible you may as well explore it thoroughly.’

Toby walked across the road, narrowly avoiding a bicycle courier.

‘Open your eyes, mate!’ the cyclist shouted. Toby thought he could tell him the same.

‘I’m trying to remember walking past it,’ he said to Shining as he entered. ‘Surely you must notice it’s taking you too long to get from one place to the other? Your eyes say it’s only a few feet and yet you spend too long walking next to it.’

‘Did you notice?’

‘No.’

‘Then you have your answer.’

Toby looked around. The ground floor was open, some signs of a few crumbled partition walls, a rotting staircase heading up to a second level that could be glimpsed through the occasional hole in the ceiling.

‘Some form of perception field, I imagine,’ said Shining, continuing to explain the trick that had hidden the building from sight. ‘You can only see it if you know it’s there.’

‘A spy’s dream.’

‘Hardly one hundred percent reliable though. It didn’t take much encouragement for you to see it, did it? If I were them, I’d have put up more protection than that.’

There was a crashing sound from upstairs.

‘What the hell was that?’ asked Toby.

‘More protection?’ wondered Shining.

‘I’m really beginning to hate this job,’ said Toby. ‘What’s it going to be now? A dragon? A yeti?’

‘Nothing so subtle I expect,’ muttered Shining, dropping to the floor and beginning to trace in the dust with his fingers.

Toby shook his head in exasperation and began backing towards the door. ‘And this would be why she was right, telling me that I wasn’t cut out for this section…Years of training and it’s still like sending a plumber to fix your computer. I don’t suppose you thought to sign out a firearm?’

‘I haven’t carried a gun for ten years,’ Shining admitted, busily drawing a large circle in the dirt. ‘I think there may be an old revolver in the office kitchen if you want to bring it with you in future. I’m pretty sure it still fires. They built things to last in the ’40s.’

‘You’re not making me feel any better.’

‘In truth, neither would the gun. It would be no more use to you in a situation like this than a roughly sharpened pencil. In fact, the pencil would be better… Easier to draw with than your finger.’

The clattering noise increased. A cacophony of splintered brick and snapped wood.

‘And drawing helps?’ asked Toby.

‘It might. Stand inside the circle and keep your feet within the line.’

‘You’re asking me to just stand still and wait for whatever that is?’

‘I am, and because you’re clever enough to realise that while you may not be trained to face whatever it is, I am, you’ll do it. Now.’

Toby stepped inside the rough circle Shining had drawn. ‘I still think I’d have preferred the gun.’

Shining was moving around on his hands and knees, adding embellishments to the circle, swirls and symbols.

‘That Egyptian?’ Toby asked.

‘Sumerian.’

‘Great. I work in British Intelligence and my section head is writing in Iraqi.’

‘Very ancient Iraqi.’

There was one more crashing noise and then it was replaced with the sound of hooves. Dust poured in torrents from the ceiling.

‘A horse,’ said Toby. ‘Somebody’s riding a horse up there.’

‘No, that would be ridiculous.’

‘I’m glad to hear you say that.’

‘Not somebody, something. You’d never get a real horse and rider up those stairs.’

Toby shook his head and stared at his feet. ‘I am imagining this, aren’t I? Like the story you told me yesterday. This is a hallucination, a trick.’

‘Possibly, but I don’t think so.’

‘You said it wasn’t a real horse and rider…’

‘That doesn’t mean they’re a figment of your imagination. Now shush a minute, I need to concentrate.’

‘Shush a minute?’

The sound of horse’s hooves increased in volume as whatever it was galloped across the length of the floor above, heading towards the stairs.

‘It’s coming.’

‘I know, and you need to not look.’

‘What?’

The hooves began to descend the stairs, Toby saw a glimpse of old bone in the pale light that cut through the shadows.

‘It’s important, Toby. You mustn’t look at it. Close your eyes, stare at your feet – whatever you find easier, but do not look directly at it.’

‘Why?’ The hooves descended even further, a thin band of the horse’s chest now visible, a ragged thing of butchered meat.

‘Because it doesn’t need to touch you to kill you.’ Shining stood in front of Toby and grasped the young man’s head in his hands. ‘Look at the floor.’ He forced Toby’s head forward. ‘Describe your shoes.’

‘What do you mean “describe my shoes”? What earthly fucking point is there in my describing my shoes?’

‘Please, Toby, trust me and do it.’

Toby gave a slight nod but Shining continued to hold his head.

‘Light brown, scuffed. Mismatched laces. I always snap the laces and end up having to replace them. Should replace the shoes too. I get through them so quickly, always buy chain store cheap. Something about the way I walk wears the heel down at an angle. Before you know it I’m on a tilt every time I stand still. What’s the point in spending real money on them?’

The hooves had reached the bottom of the stairway. Their progress slow now, and steady.

‘Keep talking,’ said Shining. ‘In what way do you walk funny?’

‘I don’t know. Not something I’m aware of. It’s only looking at the shoes that you notice. Forty-five degree angle worn out on each heel. Right in the corner.’

‘Do you get back pain?’

The hooves continued towards them. No urgency, just a gentle, casual trot across the cement floor.

‘Let me guess: you’re a trained chiropractor too?’

‘Not sure I go along with chiropractic medicine, actually.’

‘I used to think that, but I went to a guy once – when I was having real back trouble – and he sorted me out a treat.’

‘I suppose there may be benefits as an art of physical manipulation. It’s the notion of “Innate Intelligence” I struggle with – the idea that manipulating the spine can cure your kidney troubles.’

‘I don’t know about all that. But I went in with back pain and I came out without it.’

‘Fair enough. I can be too much of a cynic sometimes.’

Toby and Shining looked at one another and Toby actually felt himself laugh. ‘You’re a mad old bastard, you know that?’

‘I do.’

The hooves circled them.

‘Ignore it,’ Shining insisted as Toby’s head twitched towards the noise. ‘It’s nothing to us. A passer-by. Beneath our attention.’

Toby nodded.

‘My sister,’ said Shining, ‘now she’s a great believer in alternative medicine. I once had to spend an hour having tea with her in Claridge’s with twenty acupuncture needles dangling from her face. The waiting staff ignored it completely of course, even though she kept getting bits of scone stuck on the tips.’

‘What’s your sister’s name?’

‘Have a guess.’

‘June?’

‘Two months out. She’s April.’

‘Your parents really didn’t like to think too hard about names, did they?’

‘Their minds were on other things. I’m lucky I wasn’t born a week later. September Shining – sounds like a Coldplay album.’

The hooves finished their circuit. The horse whinnied, the sound wet and raw.

‘Thank you for not suggesting I was too old to have heard of Coldplay,’ Shining continued. ‘My ears are still functioning perfectly.’

‘Not if they’re listening to Coldplay, they’re not.’

‘You prefer Beethoven, I suppose?’

‘Piss off.’

‘Sorry… Ludwig.’

‘You’re forgiven… September.’

‘So what music do you like?’

‘I don’t know… all sorts…’

‘Please tell me you’re not the sort of man who just listens to the radio and occasionally digs out his two CDs, one of James Bond themes and the other Queen’s Greatest Hits?’

‘No. I like a lot of music. It’s just all a bit—’

The horse whinnied again, this time followed by the sound of something fleshy hitting the floor.

‘—strange. I like atmospheres. Weird sounds. A lot of movie soundtracks. Tom Waits… Love Tom Waits.’

‘“Innocent When You Dream” was always one of my favourites. Rather apt with people running through a graveyard.’

‘You know him then? Don’t suppose he’s one of your agents?’

‘Sadly not… he works out of Langley.’

The hooves began to retreat. Slow, reluctant, heading back towards the stairs.

‘It’s going,’ said Toby.

‘It is.’ The hooves began to ascend the stairs once more. ‘But don’t relax just yet.’

‘As if I would.’

There was a final, terrible cry from the horse and then the hooves galloped across the floor above and there was a loud crash as it departed their world.

Both men sagged against one another in relief.

‘And you think you haven’t got what it takes to survive in Section 37?’ said Shining. ‘I think you’re a natural.’

‘Why am I not finding that a comfort?’

‘The day you get comfortable with any of this would be the day you’d be in the most danger. I’ve been up to my neck in the impossible for fifty years and it still gives me the willies.’

‘What was that thing?’

‘Angel of Death – at least, an exceptionally clichéd manifestation of it.’

‘Angels? I have to believe in angels now?’

‘Just a name. Magic is all about personality and preconception. That trap was laid by a traditionalist – it was a pure dose of Dennis Wheatley.’

‘Who?’

‘A writer, prone to bursts of occult enthusiasm, extremely popular in the twentieth century. Doesn’t matter. My point is that magic tells you less about itself than about the user. The same force could appear in countless different ways, reflecting the tastes – the fears – of the person activating it.’

‘So we’re looking for an old gymkhana rider?’

‘Very funny.’

‘I was told Section 37 was where they put the clowns; I was just trying to fit in.’

‘The Clown Service? I rather like that…’

‘That’s because you have the thickest skin in intelligence. Are we safe now?’

Shining looked around. ‘I think so. Magic is also all about energy. You don’t waste it. What we experienced would almost certainly have been more than enough security to keep the casual intruder at bay.’

He stepped outside of the circle and motioned for Toby to do the same. ‘Mind the edges though; better to leave it intact in case we need it again.’

‘How does it work? The circle, I mean.’

‘For all that magic may seem chaotic, it’s bound very heavily by rules. Like any science. Accept that the horse and rider were manifestations, rather than literal things – the mask a certain force chose to wear. The mask I chose to face it with is the circle in the dust. It’s all about the principle. Old magic responds to old symbology. A spiritual firewall that the occult virus respects and does not cross.’

‘So it could have crossed it?’

‘Of course – it’s just a line in the dirt. But it never would. It’s an agreement. Rules must always be obeyed.’

‘If the occult is nothing but red tape, perhaps I have been trained in it after all. So is this the same warehouse you were monitoring all those years ago?’

‘The very same. Which is terribly interesting. I wouldn’t have expected it to have been preserved all this time.’ They quartered the large room, examining everything, Shining continuing to voice his thoughts. ‘Unless it was just never cleaned up? No. Someone would have had to come along and hide the place away… And they would have had to do that after I was last here… But who could have done that?’

‘Krishnin?’

Shining turned and looked at Toby. ‘Couldn’t be. Krishnin’s dead.’

‘Can you be sure?’

‘Pretty sure, seeing that I killed him.’

Toby had no idea how to respond to that. Even though Shining had admitted to having blood on his hands – who didn’t in this business? – Toby still couldn’t picture him as a killer.

‘I had no choice,’ Shining added, perhaps seeing the look on the young man’s face.

‘You don’t have to justify it.’

‘Not to you, perhaps.’

They moved towards the stairs.

‘You sure it’s safe to go up there now?’ Toby asked.

‘No,’ Shining admitted, ‘but there’s nothing down here.’

The old man smiled and led the way up the ancient steps. He stopped halfway and looked back at Toby who had yet to start climbing. ‘If you want to wait down there, I don’t mind.’

‘Not a chance. Just thought I’d hang back till you’d tested how rotten the wood is.’

‘If I die, you’re out of a job.’

‘You say that as if it would be a bad thing.’

Once Shining had reached the top floor, Toby followed. He weighed more and the wood creaked under every step.

The second floor was clearly empty. Light shone from the wide-open hatchway leading out to the ancient hoist. Several floorboards were missing, but Toby made his careful way over and looked out, gazing down on the street below. He watched a car make its ignorant way past them. A young couple wrestling with a map were clearly trying to find their way back to the tourist attractions. Toby paid careful attention as they drew up beneath him.

‘I wonder what would happen if I dropped something on them,’ he speculated. ‘Would they notice us then?’

‘Probably,’ said Shining. ‘As I said before, it’s all about perception. They have been persuaded not to notice us, that’s all. Same trick I used on the train.’

‘The train?’

‘Didn’t you notice the total lack of attention from other passengers yesterday?’

Toby admitted he had. ‘I thought they were just being typical Londoners.’

‘That makes it easier, certainly. This city is programmed to mind its own business. But the extra nudge I gave them meant we could talk in private.’

‘Like Cyril? The man you told me about yesterday?’

‘Ah, poor Cyril. That was more a natural gift, though he certainly learned to emphasise it. Truth is: it’s not difficult to make people refuse to acknowledge something, even if it’s right in front of them.’ Shining shrugged. ‘I think that sums up my career in one sentence.’

‘Yeah, I was wondering about that. I mean… The things you keep showing me – I don’t want to accept them. But I’m not an idiot. Why would I deny the evidence of my own eyes?’

‘Well – ignoring the fact that we’ve already proved the eyes are not to be trusted – I’ll take the point as you intended it. It’s not that the rest of the Service disbelieves what I do – though, naturally, few even know I exist – more that they choose not to think about it. Accepting evidence I’ve presented and shoving it away in a box is one thing, but actively pursuing it is another. They leave me alone. They’d rather not be involved.’

Shining kicked at a pile of rags on the floor in irritation. ‘On the subject of not seeing what should be plain, I take it you’ve realised the problem we’re facing.’

‘We’ve tracked the radio signal to an empty building,’ said Toby, ‘but where’s the transmitter?’

‘It wouldn’t have to be huge, but we’d certainly have seen it if it were here.’

‘There aren’t any other rooms?’

‘No. I’ve been here before, remember?’

‘You going to tell me what happened?’

‘Later, when we’re out of here.’ Shining looked around, checking the roof, nimbly hopping over a couple of gaps in the floorboards. Then he sighed and moved back towards the stairs. ‘We’re wasting our time. Invisibility. Perception. Blindness. There’s far too much of that at the moment.’ He scratched at his beard. ‘Synchronicity or just a pain in the arse? It should be here and yet we can’t see it.’

‘Could it be buried?’ wondered Toby. ‘How powerful are these things?’

‘We’re talking about a shortwave radio transmitter,’ said Shining, ‘possibly an extremely old one. It’s not an iPod. We’re looking for a decent sized box and a whopping great antenna.’

‘The roof?’ Toby suggested.

‘Possibly,’ Shining admitted, ‘but I don’t know how we can get a decent look.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Toby, ‘I do.’ He leaned out of the hatchway towards the hoist, grabbing hold of the hanging chain and yanking on it to test its strength.

‘You’re not going to go swinging out there?’

‘Of course I’m bloody not – I’m not that mad. But I can climb up onto the winch support and from there I should be able to see across the roof.’

‘Well,’ said Shining, as he came back over, ‘if you’re sure. Would you like me to hold your jacket?’

Toby handed it to him, gritting his teeth and pulling himself up onto the heavy wooden crossbar. It creaked but held. Making a concerted effort not to look down, Toby used the roof to steady himself, grabbing hold of the edge of the slates and slowly getting to his feet until he was standing upright on the winch support. One of the tiles came away in his hand and his stomach flipped as he fought to keep his balance. The tile smashed on the road below.

‘Try not to kill anyone,’ said Shining. ‘I include you in that, obviously.’

‘How kind.’

Grabbing another tile, wiggling it first to make sure it would hold, Toby stretched up so that he could see over the edge. The roof was empty, at least on the side that was facing the street.

‘If there’s anything on the far side I wouldn’t be able to see it from here,’ he shouted, ‘but as I’m not going up there, we’ll just have to take it as read.’

‘And as your superior I’m happy to sign off on that,’ said Shining, ‘so get back in here before my staff consists again of just me.’

Toby sat on the cross bar, turned around and lowered himself. After a brief, terrifying moment of hanging in space and being sickeningly aware of the fact, he managed to get his foot back onto the ledge and Shining pulled him inside.

‘Obviously,’ the old man said, ‘I’d have been only too happy to have climbed out there myself, but you seemed to want to prove yourself.’

‘Well, if you won’t let me do any of the magic stuff, I have to make myself useful somehow.’

Shining pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen. After a moment, the sound of the numbers station started playing from its small speaker.

‘Nine hundred and ninety nine, five, five, seven…’

‘Oman put an app on my phone that lets me listen to the broadcast,’ Shining explained. ‘He can be terribly clever about that sort of thing.’

‘It’s started counting down. It said one thousand yesterday.’

‘That’s rather ominous. I do hope we haven’t somehow set it off by coming here.’

‘I’d find that easier to believe if there was actually anything here. Wonder how quickly it’s counting?’

‘Nine hundred and ninety eight, five, five, seven, five, five, seven; nine hundred and ninety seven…’

‘I’ll time it,’ said Toby looking at his watch.

They both listened to the radio repeating the same numbers over and over until…

‘Nine hundred and ninety six, five, five, seven, five, five seven…’

‘Three minutes.’

‘Check it again, in case it’s not regular.’

Toby did so.

‘Nine hundred and ninety five, five, five, seven, five, five, seven…’

‘Same again, we drop a digit every three minutes.’

Toby pulled his phone from his pocket and opened a calculator app. ‘Which would mean we’d hit zero in…’ he tapped away on the screen, ‘just under fifty hours.’

Shining smiled. ‘How lovely. Nothing sharpens the attention quite like a countdown, does it?’

‘Counting down to what?’ Toby didn’t expect Shining to answer; it was more an expression of his own frustration.

Shining had wandered over to the open hatchway again. Something he saw through it made him gasp and run towards the stairs.

‘What?’ Toby asked, wincing at the prospect of the old man stumbling at any moment.

A little more carefully, Toby followed on behind. By the time he had cleared the rickety stairs, Shining was already at the front door and charging through it.

‘Damn him!’ Shining shouted, just as Toby caught up with him in the street outside.

‘What was it?’

‘I saw him again,’ said Shining, pacing up and down in frustration, ‘standing out here, looking up at me.’

This was the first time Toby had seen Shining lose even the slightest bit of self-control.

‘Saw who?’

‘Krishnin.’ Speaking that name deflated Shining. He stopped pacing and looked towards Toby. ‘Which probably sounds absurd.’

‘You always sound absurd. I’m getting used to that. You say you’ve seen him before – recently?’

‘Yesterday. That’s what set me thinking about this place. But I knew I couldn’t have… I couldn’t have.’

Toby shrugged. ‘Everything you say seems impossible to me. What makes this any more impossible than everything else?’

‘I saw him die!’ Shining insisted. ‘I killed him. My first. The first life I ever took.’

‘And now he’s back. That seems no more unlikely to me than alternative dimensions, invisible radios, Angels of Death and disappearing warehouses. Business as usual for Section 37, I’d have thought.’

Shining smiled. ‘Thank you. I appreciate you’re being supportive.’

‘I’m being honest. So a dead Russian’s back from the grave? Fine. If I can work with everything else I can work with that.’

Shining’s phone continued to squawk out the numbers station broadcast.

‘Nine hundred and ninety four, five, five, seven, five, five, seven.’

‘Turn that thing off for now would you?’ asked Toby. ‘Then tell me what it was that happened here between you and Krishnin. Then maybe we can decide what to do next?’

Shining nodded. ‘A plan.’ He reached for his phone.

‘Nine hundred and ninety three, five, five, sev—’

CHAPTER SIX: NOSTALGIA (2)

a) Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, London, 20th December 1963

By the time I arrived back at Farringdon Road, O’Dale was getting impatient.

‘Thought you’d gone and got yourself shot,’ he said, appearing at the head of the stairs as I climbed up them. ‘Another half an hour and I’d have had to figure out how to send a secure message to the powers that be.’

‘I’m fine,’ I assured him, ‘but I appreciate your concern.’

‘Can’t file my invoice without you, can I?’ He gave a grunt that might have been a laugh; equally it might not. ‘Whatever you’ve been up to, it must have been more interesting than sitting around here. The Ruskies have barely opened their mouths to one another all morning.’

‘Then you might appreciate a little field trip I had planned for later on tonight.’

If the Colonel wasn’t going to allow me any more men, O’Dale was all I had. As much as it might go against protocol to leave the surveillance post unmanned, I was damned if I was going to walk into that warehouse on my own.

‘You always did extol the virtues of a trigger finger,’ I told him. ‘Meet me at the warehouse at one o’clock and bring your hardware with you.’

‘Late nights better pay extra,’ he said, jotting down the address as I dictated it to him. But the thought of a bit of action seemed to have put a discernible spring in his step as he went down the stairs and out of the house.

I settled down on the chair he had left warm and began to unwrap a set of sandwiches I’d picked up from a delicatessen. I ate to the sound of occasional footsteps and slammed doors from the surveillance speakers. While there was little in the way of conversation, the people were active enough.

I passed the afternoon reviewing the taped surveillance while also keeping an ear on current events. O’Dale had been right – there was nothing coming out of that house that was of any interest. It was so dull that at four o’clock I loaded up fresh tape in the recorders and lay on the bed, planning a quick nap that soon extended beyond my intention. I woke at eight, startled, ashamed and angry.

I made myself a coffee, checked the tapes in case I’d missed anything (I hadn’t) and then began to run over my plan for the night’s mission. It being an embarrassingly simple plan, this occupied me for all of ten minutes. I was stir crazy by the time the clock slouched towards midnight.

It sounded as if the residents across the road had gone to bed. There was no indication that they had left the building. One of them had shuffled his flatulent way past a microphone earlier. I hoped they were settled in for the night.

I left the house with a small holdall carrying tools and a change of clothes for once I reached Shad Thames. A young man on his first covert mission.

b) Shad Thames, London, 20th December 1963

‘Look at you,’ said O’Dale once I’d pulled my balaclava into place. ‘Mole out of Wind in the Bloody Willows.’

‘If I’m as quiet and attentive as him, you’ll have no cause for complaint.’

‘This is a covert mission, not scrumping for apples.’

‘No need to worry about me,’ I insisted. ‘I’m capable of keeping my end up.’

‘You’d better be. With something like this, you’re only as strong as your back-up. You buckle and I’m up to my neck in it before you can say Borsht. Show me your gun.’

‘Erm…’ This was awkward. I hadn’t thought to sign one out. ‘I haven’t got one.’

O’Dale rolled his eyes and dug around in the pocket of his duffel coat. He pulled out a heavy ex-service revolver. ‘I came with a spare. Look after it – I brought that back from Egypt after the war.’

I held the thing in my hand. It weighed a ton.

‘Please tell me you’ve had some firearms training,’ he begged.

‘Of course I have.’ A rainy afternoon in a stately home in Kent, a bored instructor working his way through a magazine about cars while myself and two others hurled bullets ineffectually at a set of targets twenty feet away.

‘That’s something.’

We were bobbing along in a small row boat requisitioned – from the River Police. Given the location of the warehouse, if we wanted to avoid the front door, our only alternative was the river.

‘Hopefully,’ I said, ‘we won’t see a soul in there anyway. We can just get in, have a snoop around, plant a few recording devices and get back to our beds.’

‘Hopefully,’ O’Dale agreed. He sounded far from convinced.

We had pliers, bolt-cutters and the cover of darkness on our side as we worked along the short row of warehouses towards our destination.

There was a narrow jetty behind the warehouse and I tied our boat up before climbing out and joining O’Dale at the chained-up doors.

‘Give me the bolt-cutters,’ he whispered, having obviously decided that the manly business of cutting through chains was quite beyond me. I didn’t bother to argue.

I held the end of the chain as he cut, to stop it from falling to the jetty or clashing against the door, then slowly uncoiled it and put it to one side.

O’Dale tried the door. ‘Still locked.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ I said, pulling out a set of lock picks from my jacket pocket.

‘Seems you’re a little more prepared than I gave you credit for,’ he acknowledged.

‘Thank you.’ I didn’t enlighten him that I’d bought the set five years earlier when going through a phase of wanting to be Harry Houdini. I might not have fully mastered the arts of escapology but I was more than a match for the door lock.

I opened it and we stepped inside.

It was completely silent. So, either it was as empty as we had hoped, or Krishnin’s men were lying in wait for us. Either way, I decided we might as well turn on our torches.

The open space revealed was all but identical in size and shape to the warehouse I had investigated earlier. But this one was in use. Forty or so crates were stacked against one wall, a set of tables laid out in front of them where someone had stood to pack whatever the crates contained. In the centre of the room there was an operating table. It was rough and dirty, the sort of thing you imagined being knocked up in a war zone. Shining the torch onto its surface, I blenched at the sight of two lotion bowls, stained with dried blood, a pair of scalpels, a syringe and a couple of depressors congealing inside them. ‘Not the healthiest approach to surgery.’

‘Who says they were trying to heal?’ asked O’Dale, looking over my shoulder.

He popped open one of the crates. ‘Some sort of chemical,’ he said, lifting a small bottle out. He unscrewed the cap and took a sniff, the scent making him flinch. ‘No idea what. Alcohol base of some kind but beyond that…’ He screwed the cap back on and slipped the bottle into his pocket.

A set of stairs led up from the ground floor and I was just starting to climb them when there was a clicking noise from above me. My face was suddenly hit by the light from someone else’s torch.

CHAPTER SEVEN: TIME

a) Shad Thames, London

‘I’ll hear the end of this if it kills me,’ Toby sighed, Shining’s story having been interrupted.

They had decamped to a coffee house.

While Toby had queued for the drinks, Shining had made a quick phone call, the result of which was responsible for the interruption.

‘Hello, Leslie,’ a man said, reaching over to shake Shining’s hand. ‘Long time no see.’

He was a giant. Cramming his physique into the tight frame of one of the cafe’s metal seats was like forcing a potato into a thimble. When he leaned forward or back, the chair moved with him, tightly clasping his body.

He mopped at a sweating brow with a neatly folded handkerchief, a strangely delicate object within his oversized fist. ‘Sorry,’ he said, tucking the handkerchief away into the pocket of his coat, ‘I came in a rush as you asked, and I’m not as fit as I once was.’

‘It’s appreciated,’ said Shining, who gestured to Toby. ‘This is my colleague, Charles Berry; he’s working with me on this.’

‘Good to meet you,’ the man said, extending his huge hand towards Toby. ‘Derek Lime, formerly known as the Big Dipper on the professional circuit. I’ve helped Leslie out a few times.’

‘You can say what you like to Derek,’ said Shining. ‘His background check’s as clean as a whistle.’

‘Did a lot of information drops during the seventies,’ said Derek, ‘while touring on the wrestling circuit. I may not blend into the background, but sometimes that’s to a man’s advantage. Who’d think I was a spy, eh?’

Toby smiled but said nothing.

‘Of course, I haven’t worked as a wrestler for thirty years now. I had a rather dramatic career change back in the early nineties.’

‘Security?’ Toby asked.

Derek looked somewhat pained. ‘That’s the thing with being a big lad, see. People can’t imagine you doing anything that doesn’t involve throwing your weight around.’

Toby winced. ‘Sorry.’

‘No problem, everyone does it. Actually I work on the Underground, you know – maintenance and stuff. My main passion though is physics.’

‘Derek’s an inventor!’ said August with a big grin.

‘Aye, I mess about with electronics and that, you know – high-end stuff.’

‘Indeed?’ Toby was still trying to imagine this ageing Hercules working his way through Underground tunnels.

‘Yeah.’ Derek made to stand up, forcing the chair off his hips like a man removing a pair of shorts. ‘But I need to get a bit of a wiggle on if you want to be finished by the start of my shift. Time machine’s in the car. I’ll see you out there, shall I?’

‘Time machine?’ asked Toby once the man had left.

‘You’re the one that said anything goes for Section 37,’ Shining replied.

‘I may have spoken too soon.’

‘Anyway, it’s not really a time machine, not in the sense you’re thinking, so you don’t have to worry.’

‘What is it then?’

Shining held up his hand so that he could concentrate on counting out his change to pay for the coffees. ‘You’ll see soon enough,’ he said, putting the money on the table. ‘Derek explains it much better than I ever could.’

Outside, Derek stood at the rear of a large van, devouring an apple.

‘Can I park outside?’ he asked. ‘It’s a pain lugging the equipment any distance.’

‘We’ll manage,’ said August before pointing out where Derek should drive.

‘We’ll walk round,’ he said. ‘See you there in a minute.’

‘Any excuse to avoid helping with the gear.’

‘So, “Leslie”,’ said Toby, ‘how did you first meet the heavyweight physicist?’

‘Well, “Charles”, it was during an operation in Berlin. He got me out of a tight scrape with a weaponised pack of Tarot cards.’

‘Of course he did. And now he builds time machines for you.’

‘Not for me – I’m just the one that convinces him not to patent. As he’ll no doubt tell you, his equipment has very unfortunate side effects, and while I trust him to use it with sufficient caution not to tear the universe in half, I don’t extend that same confidence to anyone else. So, I pay him an annual fee out of expenses that keeps Section 37 as his sole business partner in temporal matters.’

‘We’re patrons of the sciences as well, are we?’

‘We are when it comes to avoiding the destruction of reality, yes.’

They walked around the corner to find Derek pacing up and down behind the van.

‘Can’t find the address,’ he said. ‘I was just about to ask in the shop.’

‘Don’t do that,’ said Shining, ‘we’re being far too visible as it is. Give me your keys.’

‘Eh?’

‘The keys to the van. I’ll park.’

‘I don’t know about that, Leslie. I mean, I’m not covered with the insurance…’

‘Oh, come on, I’m only going to park it. What’s the worst that can happen?’

Derek sighed and handed the keys over. Shining took them, grinning from ear to ear, and climbed into the driver’s seat. With a rev of the engine, he performed a rather aggressive three-point turn until the van was pointing towards the gap between the shop and Cinnamon Wharf.

‘What did you say about your insurance again?’ Shining asked before hitting the accelerator and, as far as Derek could tell, aiming the van right at the wall.

The big man gave a cry of panic and waved his hands in the air as the van suddenly vanished, the air rippling around it then resolving itself into the old warehouse. Shining had driven the van through the open double doors.

‘You bastard!’ said Derek.

‘Come on,’ said Toby, laughing. He guided the big man into the warehouse before anyone spotted them.

‘You’ll be the death of me,’ Derek moaned as Shining climbed out of the van. ‘One of these days I’ll just keel over – a heart can only stand so much.’

‘I make your life interesting,’ said Shining. ‘Of course, if you were Chinese you would take that as a curse. Or not, depending on whether you choose to believe they ever said it.’

‘Interesting I can live with. It’s the bloody terrifying that cripples me.’

‘You and me both,’ said Toby.

Shining closed the large double doors leading to the street. ‘I hope we haven’t drawn too much attention to ourselves. It’s all very well three men and a van moving around the area but if they keep popping in and out of thin air, eyebrows are likely to be raised.’

Derek opened the back of his van and began to pull large, plastic crates out. ‘If we can get this set up on the far side of the room, we should be OK. It’s a pretty narrow field, but I can cover the majority of the downstairs.’

‘Cover it with what?’ Toby asked. ‘Leslie said you’d explain.’

‘Leaving it to the experts, eh? OK, well, are you familiar with the Stone Tape theory?’

‘Probably best to assume I’m not familiar with anything beyond basic school physics.’

Derek nodded and began unpacking his equipment. ‘Drag that desk over, would you? I need somewhere to set all this up.’

Toby did as he was told.

‘The Stone Tape theory,’ Derek continued, ‘maintains that an environment soaks up things that happen in it. Strong emotions create psionic energy that is then stored in the matter surrounding it. That psionic energy can then be accessed, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not, by a person who visits that environment. It’s a popular explanation for ghosts. What we’re seeing is not the spirit of someone who has passed over; it is merely a psychic recording, an after image. Residual Haunting as opposed to Intelligent Haunting.’

‘Right. And that works does it?’

‘There have been arguments on both sides for years. Some say it provides a believable scientific explanation for otherwise unexplained phenomena; others claim it’s pseudoscience, dressing the impossible up in apparently convincing yet strictly meaningless terms. Various experiments have been carried out trying to test it, most concentrating on brainwaves and dopamine levels, trying to isolate what it is about certain people’s biological make-up that might make them receptive to the psionic information around them.’

‘Any of those experiments fruitful?’

‘Not for most people. Because the trick lies not only in optimising the receptiveness of the witness but also strengthening the broadcast.’

‘And that’s what you do?’

‘It’s part of it. This equipment comes at both sides simultaneously. It creates a sonic wavelength that affects and focuses the brainwaves of those in the room and…’ He looked up from the mess of wiring he cradled in his fists. ‘This part is right tricky to explain in terms of school physics.’

‘Small words.’

‘Are you familiar with Close Timelike Curves?’

‘No.’

‘How about Postselection? The observance of probability?’

Toby sighed. ‘Does the thing make time go backwards?’

‘It allows us to observe history, yes.’

‘Let’s leave it at that. Leslie told me it was dangerous.’

‘If you push at physics it tends to push back. The longer we leave it active, the further back we view, the greater the risk.’

‘And the risk is?’

‘Twofold. We’re playing with probability in a manner I’ve specifically designed to limit paradox issues, the emphasis is on observing rather than interacting. That said, I’m creating a window of temporal fluctuation – and that is always open to interference. If we stray too close to it, we could end up influencing it. That would be bad. The other problem is more complex.’

‘Hooray.’

‘The longer we push the quantum state into flux…’

‘The words are getting a little long.’

‘The more we screw with probability, the more changes could actually take effect. I’m loosening the actual timeline in order to see the probability wave. Do that for too long and the whole lot could unravel: history rewriting itself from the point of intrusion.’

‘Which would be bad.’

‘Potentially catastrophic.’

Toby turned to Shining. ‘I hope this is worth wiping out history for.’

Shining smiled. ‘On the plus side: if it all goes wrong we won’t know a thing about it.’

It took Derek about an hour to get set up. What looked like cone speakers surrounded the ground floor of the warehouse, wires running from a portable generator in the back of the van to the various piles of equipment. Derek was established behind a bank of controls – everything from what looked like a portable recording studio to a very battered netbook balanced on top. Toby noted that the desktop wallpaper was a picture of the car from Back to the Future. He hoped he wasn’t about to die horribly as a pawn in the most dangerous game of live action role-playing ever played.

‘Nearly ready,’ said Derek. ‘Normally the focus of the machine would be a single object, not a whole room, so I’m hoping it’s not going to blow us up the minute I turn it on. Could one of you do me a favour and fetch the small, pink box from the passenger’s seat of the van?’

Toby obliged. ‘Will this make it safer?’

‘Not really,’ said Derek, opening his lunchbox and taking out an apricot. ‘The doctor tells me to eat little but often.’

Derek reached out to the netbook and opened a program on the desktop. Slowly, the equipment around them began to hum. Derek picked up a stopwatch from the desk and slung it around his neck.

‘Now remember,’ he said, ‘we have limited time to do this and we’re dealing with two sets of unreliable factors: quantum probability and a recording method that only registers certain events. What we’re about to see will not be linear, nor will it necessarily be the specific events you’re hoping for. It is what it is, gentlemen, and I hope it’s of use. One final warning: you must not get too close to the probability field. Your presence could contaminate the past, could change something. Basically, lads, it’s bloody dangerous – so keep behind the desk.’

He started the stopwatch while simultaneously triggering the program he’d opened on the netbook desktop.

At first nothing happened but an increase in the noise from the equipment. Toby grimaced as the hum from the speakers became so intense he was sure something was likely to break.

Then his vision skewed, as if everything in front of him had shifted to the left, distorting and stretching. Rubbing his eyes didn’t help. He felt his balance go, as his brain reacted to what he was seeing and was unable to find its equilibrium. Derek grabbed his arm.

‘It’s not your eyes,’ he shouted. ‘It takes a minute for the brain to compensate – should have warned you. Hold onto something.’

Toby did so, gripping the edge of the desk in front of him.

Despite the disorientation, he couldn’t bring himself to close his eyes or look away.

The light falling in from the windows began to snap on and off, day to night, night to day. Flashes of orange street-lighting strobed across the walls, making it look like the place was in a state of emergency.

He watched as a pile of dried leaves shifted around the floor. They moved as one, skipping forward and back across the dirty concrete. Life rendered as bad stop-motion animation, jerky and non-cohesive.

Suddenly, a young man appeared in the centre of the room. In one hand he held a large torch, in the other a heavy revolver.

‘That’s you!’ said Toby.

‘It is,’ Shining agreed.

The young August vanished, and the inside of the warehouse was flooded by daylight once again. Over by the door, Shining and Toby stood face to face as they were circled by a dangerous force left there to kill them.

‘You can’t see it,’ said Toby. ‘The Angel of Death isn’t there.’

‘I’m not sure I want to know what you’re talking about,’ said Derek.

‘It exists outside time,’ explained Shining, ‘never quite in line with our physical world.’

‘As a physicist, can I just say the phrase “outside time” is setting my teeth on edge?’ said Derek.

The earlier Toby and Shining vanished and it was night once more. A large rat worked its way along the path created by the beam of street light shining through a window.

Daylight again and the room was a hive of activity: men in plain suits moving to and fro, filling packing chests with small glass bottles.

A cracking sound and a flash of sparks came from one side of the room.

‘Forty-five seconds – the equipment’s struggling,’ said Derek, checking the stopwatch. ‘I may not be able to keep this up for much longer.’

‘You have to,’ insisted Shining. ‘We’ve learned nothing of use so far.’

Was that true? Toby was staring at one of the men. ‘Him,’ he said, ‘the one on the left… there’s something familiar… I know his face, don’t I?’

Abruptly the image changed again. Night-time and the young Shining had returned, backing away from a figure that was descending towards him down the stairs.

‘Well, this rings a bell,’ said Toby. ‘Maybe I’ll get to find out how it panned out after all.’

The view changed again.

‘Or maybe not…’

It was still night-time but the warehouse seemed empty. Then, slowly, moving towards them from out of the darkness of the opposite wall, came a solitary figure.

‘Krishnin,’ said Shining.

This was Toby’s first look at the man he’d heard so much about. He was reminded of Shining’s description: the normality that hung over this man without quite managing to obscure what lay beneath. His eyes were slightly too narrow, his mouth slightly too wide. He seemed to be looking directly at them.

‘I thought we were just observers,’ said Toby.

‘At this distance, we are,’ Derek replied.

‘Then how come he sees us?’

Krishnin continued to walk toward them.

‘He can’t,’ insisted Derek. ‘It’s coincidence – he’s looking at something else, he…’

The image in front of them changed yet again: the young August Shining had returned, still backing away from whoever it was on the stairs. He raised his gun…

Daylight again, the skeletal rat, spinning around and around, becoming dust that spiralled in a tiny cyclone around its dwindling cadaver.

‘One minute!’ shouted Derek. ‘I’m going to have to power down. We’re hitting the breaking point of causality.’

Then night again, and they were gazing out into what seemed like nothing but darkness. More sparks, and the whining from the speakers grew louder.

‘But we’ve found out nothing we didn’t—’ As Shining suddenly stopped talking Toby turned to look at him. Shining wasn’t alone: one gloved hand was clamped over his mouth, another held a knife to his throat.

More sparks.

Derek didn’t know whether to tackle the theoretical danger surrounding him or the very real threat standing next to him. In the end, the safety of history won out. He reached for the netbook.

‘Wait!’ Toby shouted, because he had recognised the figure holding Shining, seen his face in the glow of the netbook’s screen as it turned towards him, nudged by Derek’s hasty fingers. It was Krishnin.

‘I can’t… I have to—’ Derek yanked the netbook free from its cables and the room was filled with daylight and the sound of the speakers winding down, a long electronic sigh.

Shining had vanished.

‘Where’s he gone?’ Toby asked.

Derek was in a panic, his eyes darting everywhere, a confused giant, with the little netbook still in one hand. ‘He can’t have… he can’t just vanish.’

‘He didn’t “just vanish”,’ Toby insisted. ‘He was taken, by Krishnin.’

‘Taken where?’ Derek looked incredulous. ‘There’s no way that the past could interact with us. No way at all. It’s like expecting your TV to talk back to you.’

‘You said that if we got too close we could affect it.’

‘Yes, but we’re the active part of that. We’re the observers; they have no idea we’re even here. Honestly, it’s impossible.’

‘That word…’ Toby sighed, ‘used to mean something. Over the last twenty-four hours it’s become hollow bluster. Turn that thing on again.’

‘I can’t.’ Derek shook his head, holding up his hands placatingly. ‘Even ignoring the risks of using it again so soon, the equipment has to cool down and reset. You may have noticed the odd explosion here and there… There are bound to be repairs needed. It wouldn’t help Leslie one bit if we blew ourselves sky high. Besides, I’m telling you… wherever he went, it wasn’t into the past. It’s just not possible.’

‘I know what I saw and from now on that’s all that matters. I’ve got to get him back.’

‘And I’ll help in whatever way I can, though right now there’s nothing we can do.’

SUPPLEMENTARY FILE: ST. MATHEW’S CHURCH, ALDGATE

Sometimes, Jimmy thought as he made his slow, spiralling way along the street, they move the fucking bus stops. It was the only explanation he could come up with. He had given it considerable thought as he trudged along stretch after stretch of unfamiliar pavement. It had almost displaced in his mind his own behaviour over the last couple of hours. Tomorrow morning, once the texts and emails began to pour in, the pictures, the proof… then such things would be part of his mental furniture. Until then, he’d ignore them. But now was all about bouncing along this road looking for bus stops. And needing a piss. Yes. Very much about that too.

Taking a short break from pondering shifting bus stops, Jimmy redirected his mental focus towards the possibility of those bastards at Stella Artois (or perhaps the good lady herself) putting something in their brew that fucked up your bladder. He was wrestling with how such scurrilous behaviour could be monetized when he spotted a church ahead. He immediately decided the only thing to do was to hop over the wall into its graveyard and deal definitively with at least one of his problems.

In his drunken state, Jimmy managed the leap over the wall perfectly but struggled on the flat, ending up lodged against a gravestone. Gravity, equilibrium and ancient stone briefly conspired against him.

Finally, escaping the gravestone, he marched forward assuming all would now be well. It wasn’t. After a few seconds the world around him turned on its axis. Jimmy thought he was still walking in a straight line, legs rising and falling, arms swaying by his side. However, his face was recognising it had just been whacked by the ground – which simply didn’t happen when you were walking properly.

It took time for Jimmy to accept that he must have fallen over. He pushed that thought to one side and concentrated on how incredibly sick he felt. It became dominant, he could consider nothing else. Had anyone ever felt so wretched? Jimmy felt a wave of self-pity, so strong he would have burst into tears if he hadn’t suddenly been so busy emptying his stomach’s contents onto the grass that lay above ‘Gladys King, (1919 – 1983) “Alive in our memories” ’. If Ms King objected to this roaring donation of stuffed-crust Pepperoni Bonanza and Belgian lager she kept quiet about it.

Eventually, spent, wet-eyed and feeling as close to death as a person can when there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them that twenty-four hours rehydration won’t fix, Jimmy rolled onto his back and looked up at a starless London sky. He had entered that stage of drunken dejection where pride is meaningless. He had neither the will nor the strength to deal with anything more complex than simply existing.

Hearing a scrabbling noise a few feet away, Jimmy decided it was probably a rat come for its nightly prayer. Perhaps even visiting a loved one in a small area of the graveyard especially dedicated to rodents? This struck him as absurdly funny and he spluttered saliva-soaked amusement for a few moments before rolling onto his side to look towards the source of the noise.

His eyes were slow to focus because they were filled with tears. The street lights shed diffused light across the world like a shower of insipid fireworks. The scrabbling noise continued. A sound of dislodged earth. Perhaps it was a badger, Jimmy thought, then asked himself whether badgers lived in cities? Why not? he generously concluded. Everyone else did. Maybe it was building a sett? Burrowing its way through soft soil and old bones. A Gothic lair constructed from ancient remains, a gloomy cathedral roofed with rib cages. Jimmy decided this was a good thing.

Scratch, scratch, scratch…

What was that? It didn’t sound like a badger. Not that Jimmy knew what a badger should sound like, but in the barely used mental file he possessed marked ‘Badger – Likely Sounds’ there was no correlation with this unrhythmic, lazy scrabbling. A fox? A cat? Oh, who knew?

If only he could see properly. He listlessly brushed away from his hands the remains of dead leaves and dirt, smearing his jacket with soil, and rubbed at his eyes. That sorted out the tears but it didn’t help with the lack of light.

‘Hello?’ he called. At least that was what the word had looked like when it had been in his head, by the time it fell out of his drunken, slack mouth it was entirely different. A useless, incomprehensible thing fat with vowels. The scrabbling continued undeterred until, with a larger sound of spilling earth, a shadow bled out across the street-lit sky right in front of Jimmy’s eyes.

‘Big for a badger,’ he said, just before the stench of an open grave washed over him.

Then the large shadow picked up a hefty stone and beat his skull in.