She strolls up the path between the floral borders and sits down on the bench next to mine. She says, hello, as if I am expecting her, or at least as if we know each other. She seems to be dressed for an occasion. She is wearing a carnation in the jacket of her two-piece set, the look helped along by her shapely figure and fashionable coiffure. We have to my knowledge never met. I think I would remember if we had.
‘I know what you were thinking about back there,’ she says. ‘I can read your thoughts.’
How can she know? Mindreading is the stuff of TV illusionists. Besides, babes like this aren’t likely to concern themselves with what I was thinking about.
‘You were trying to remember who discovered the speed of light,’ she says. ‘And more to the point, how they calculated it.’
Uncanny! I was trying to remember who discovered the speed of light, and how they would have done it without elaborate scientific instruments back then. How they would have been able to measure it?
‘But you don’t know, do you?,’ she continues, ‘And you’re not sure if you’ve ever known. You don’t have a scientific background.’
I don’t, and I don’t. But how does she know this? How can this woman, a complete stranger, know anything about me, let alone what I’m thinking? I could have been thinking about a million and one things. As we are in Salisbury, I could have been thinking about the cathedral and trying to remember from my history lessons at St Cuthbert’s many years ago, when it was built, and given that it would have been done with pulleys and hand tools, how it was ever completed. I could have been trying to recall the lyrics to You Can Call Me Al, the angels in the architecture verse, perhaps. I could have been considering a visit to Salisbury Museum to see the works by Turner and Constable, or making my way to one of the other tourist hotspots that abound in this lovely town. I could have been thinking about Novichok. I could simply have been thinking about the meeting I have later at the Guildhall, going over some last-minute details in my head and deciding how I am going to play it. I could have been thinking about my flight tomorrow. But I wasn’t. I was stuck for ages on the question about the speed of light. Who calculated it and how? I feel I ought to know.
‘It was a Danish astronomer,’ she says, unprompted. ‘Ole Roemer. In 1676. He measured the speed of light by timing eclipses of Jupiter’s moon, Io.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘It might have taken me a while to get there. I was a long way off.’
In truth, I have never heard of Ole Roemer, so I would have had to Google it, and I left my phone in the car to enjoy a few moments of peace in the park while I ate the lunch I had bought earlier at M and S Simply Food. What had prompted my curiosity about the speed of light, anyway? Had it started off by my wondering how fast the white whippet was whizzing after the ball the dude in the designer leisurewear was throwing with his snazzy ball launcher? It was a pretty speedy dog.
‘Don’t look so worried,’ she says. ‘Mindreading and telepathy are part of my training, and in case you are wondering, the glam thing is a front. As you will know, the traditional thinking has been for agents on ops to dress discreetly to blend in, but this is changing. A new bold approach. Reverse psychology, apparently. Anyway, Agent K, let’s get down to business. Here are your instructions,’
She hands me a buff A4 envelope.
Don’t SHDW know that I am retired? I need to tell her I don’t do this sort of work anymore. I am no longer Agent K. But I am momentarily too stunned to speak, and by the time I have gathered my wits, my bewildering contact is disappearing into the distance. If she could really read my thoughts, she would know what I needed to say. She would know I was going to disappoint her and turn down the assignment. Unless……Unless I am secretly pleased to be considered by SHDW, she has detected this and taken it into account. Unless I am already relishing the prospect of being back in the field, and she understands this. It would be relatively easy for her to conclude that the day-to-day drudgery of the corporate world could not match the thrills and spills of clandestine ops. Sitting around a big table to discuss targets, forecasts, and outcomes or poring over spreadsheets are not going to offer the same level of excitement as tailing a dissident Moravian magician through the subterranean depths of an unfamiliar city or playing cat and mouse with the jazz police.
Assignments have never been predictable, but even so, this is an odd one. I have the keys to an address in Totnes in Devon, where I am to await the arrival of a thin white duke who will arrive by an unexpected means. Don’t be alarmed, it says. He will give me further instructions as to how I am to proceed. The envelope contains the key. I am instructed not to park nearby and inside the house to keep away from the windows, but this is quite common in this line of work. Stealth and subterfuge are everything, the difference between life and, well, the other thing. Keep the television tuned to Channel 137, it says, and use AES 256-bit encryption on all communications. His thinness will arrive within twenty-four hours.
It doesn’t sound like the most active mission I’ve been given, and what’s the thing with Totnes? But I am intrigued. Totnes may be a small town, but it punches above its weight in unconventional and organic, with ethical and fair trade the norm. It even has its own currency. How cool is that? It gives Glastonbury a run for its money with posh treehuggers and ephemeral markets and has more listed buildings per person than anywhere in the country. It has been described as the most eccentric town in England and a sign advertises, Twinned with Narnia. It is overrun by wizards and artists. I bought a painting there once by David Bowie.
It will do no harm to miss my meeting in Salisbury. They probably won’t miss me.
After an hour or so on the road, I arrive in Totnes and settle into the accommodation. It is a cottage in a small street a little way off the centre. They don’t seem to like cars a lot in the town so I have to walk to get provisions from the market. The trip is filled with quirky sights. Where else would you see a 30 Minute Parking sign with the line No Reincarnating within 1 hour? Or come across Möbius Loop Dancing on the street? Totnes is Alternative with a capital A.
I tune the 56-inch TV to channel 137 as instructed, lock up and sit back to enjoy a delicious creamy red lentil curry. There is not much on the telly it seems, so after the last piece of Portuguese custard tart, I give Lesley a ring. She will be wondering where I am. I should have done it earlier. Without going into great detail about what I’m doing, I tell her I will be away for a day or two, does she want me to get anything?
I see and hear nothing. All the doors and windows are locked and bolted and I have activated the security alarms. But like an apparition at first, a tall thin man appears. One second the room is empty and the next the pale spectral figure in the white suit is there in front of me. He seemingly just materialises. Fades in. He can only have come through the TV. Through Channel 137. There is no other explanation. The set seems to have moved position on the wall. It’s at a different angle. Can this sort of thing happen in Totnes? There’s some pretty strange goings-on but can people travel by TV here?
Giving me no time to be surprised, the newcomer tells me that an anarchist activist named Stanislav Ruby is detuning pianos on an industrial scale and it is going to be my job to stop him.
What!
‘If you’ve been to a concert lately you will have noticed that the piano is out of tune,’ he says. ‘This is the work of Stanislav Ruby. He has found a way to remotely de-tune them. We haven’t been able to establish why he’s doing this. While it started locally in the south-west, it is now happening all over the country. Swindon, Stratford, Oxford, Coventry. You can re-tune the pianos, but Stanislav’s device is so powerful that fifteen minutes later, the strings are gone again. No one is sure how he does it. It’s a mystery. Nothing like it has happened before. And think about it, why would it have happened? What would be the purpose? …….. SHDW has been called in to stop him.’
‘I see,’ I say, not really seeing at all.
‘Unlikely as it may seem, our intel suggests he is operating somewhere in the Newton Abbot area which is just up the road, but his cyber-security is so tight we can’t get a fix on exactly where. It’s possible even that Newton Abbot is a smokescreen, but we have to start somewhere, and we’ve no other front-line agents available at the moment. There was that little mishap in the northern sector last month. So we’re relying on you, K, to track him down and neutralise him. Bring him in. I see that you found the Glock in the safe. All set then.’
I haven’t been going to a lot of concerts lately, so before setting off for Newton Abbot. I do some research to see how serious the piano problem is. It appears that over the past few weeks, several top bands have sacked their keyboard player for being washed up or for being wasted on stage, a leading classical pianist has committed suicide following his lamentable performance of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3 at St Georges, Bristol, and Billy Joel cancelled his UK concert tour after the disastrous opening show in Watford. Piano showrooms across the south are holding buy one get one free, closing-down sales. People are cancelling lessons and piano tuners, who initially felt all their Christmases had come at once, are now having nervous breakdowns. Not that there’s any suggestion that there is a connection, but sales of guitars are up.
SHDW hasn’t set me up with anywhere to stay in Newton Abbot, nor do I have arrangements to meet anyone. From hereonin I am on my own. This is a situation that I was once very familiar with. This was pretty much my job description. Agents have to work on their own initiative. Purposefully and stealthily. It’s the only way to get the job done. I have some thoughts as to where I should be headed. Charlie has a recreational pursuits shop in Newton Abbot and I know he is someone who keeps his ear to the ground. He has a good grasp of what is going on around him. Business depends on good communication. He might have ideas about where I should begin to look for our miscreant and will be able to point me in the direction of suitable accommodation for my stay. It will be good to catch up with Charlie, anyway. We have a shared admiration for The Clash. I believe Charlie was a personal friend of Joe Strummer.
Joe of course famously lived in the village of Broomfield near Bridgwater which is a stone’s throw from Hinkley Point C Power Station or Dingly Dell as it is referred to by locals. When I fill Charlie in about what it is I am after. he thinks Dingly might be a good place to start looking for Stanislav Ruby. After all, he says, Ruby would need a prodigious power generation source for his expanding operation, and to be fair, Newton Abbot may not be best placed to provide this. The power would need to be off grid for a start. On the other hand, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that Ruby may have found a way to harness it from the nuclear facility at Dingly. I think Charlie is probably right. There’s a lot of serious-looking equipment being moved around down there and with all that research and development, it must be difficult to monitor everything that is going on. It would be easy to factor in some slippage here and there. Mass infiltration, probably. It fits perfectly with the clandestine nature of the spy narrative too. A search for local news reveals a post on the We Love Stogursey Facebook page mentions Sunday Services being cancelled and suspicious activities at the church. Stogursey is the nearest village to Dingly Dell, so perhaps we are on the right track. If not I can always catch the Sheep Racing at Nether Stowey. Where else would you be able to see this spectacle?
Charlie tells me his friends Chris and Pat live in Watchet, a little way up the coast. As luck should have it, he says, they are going to Portugal for a week or two about now. They might be pleased to have someone to look after the house for the duration. After a few Joe Strummer anecdotes and a run-through of a Clash tune for old times’ sake, Charlie phones Chris. It turns out that they had had someone earmarked to house-sit, but they had been let down at the last moment, so they are only too happy to agree to the arrangement. As they are leaving for Portugal the following day, Chris says they will send a set of keys to Charlie’s by courier and leave instructions about the plant watering schedule.
The house in Watchet is very colourful and nicely positioned in a quiet bit of the town. My search area is within easy reach too and quite a scenic drive. Dingly Dell is a few miles away, but on a clear day, if you lean out of the bedroom window, you can see it glinting in the sun. Pat seems to be an artist and there are paintings of hers, mostly still lifes and landscapes, lining the walls. They are very good. An educated colour palette and a variety of styles. Chris, it appears, writes speculative fiction. I find some collections of his stories among the vast library on the bookshelves. I read a review of one from the back over. It seems he is highly regarded. Quirky, postmodern stuff. Not the sort of thing I would normally read, but perhaps I should. Chris has left one of his laptops logged in and a large Google Docs file is open. Curiosity gets the better of me, and I take a peek. It appears to be a short story about a secret agent brought back into service to handle a puzzling case. At first, he thinks it is a case of mistaken identity. It sounds familiar. Wait a minute! It is familiar. I catch the title. It is called Dingly Dell.
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