Read Online The Clown Service by Guy Adams - Free Book Online

he could of their lives and motivations. It was important that he could read people. Thatwas 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 rushof 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