by Gavin, Rohan
He moved across the landing toward a closet located outside Clive and Jackie’s bedroom. Barely lit, kneeling by the drawers at the base of the closet, was a ghostly human form. A familiar one.
“Dad,” Darkus whispered, his heart beating in his throat.
The shape stopped what it was doing.
“Darkus?” the shape said.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for something to wear. Doesn’t he have anything that isn’t nylon?” A cigarette lighter flicked to life, illuminating Alan Knightley wearing an ill-fitting tracksuit that clearly belonged to Clive. Darkus couldn’t quite believe his eyes: his father looked different now that he was animated rather than unconscious; he looked younger than his forty-eight years—more how Darkus remembered him. Knightley held the lighter closer to his face and smiled, eyes shining.
“It’s good to see you, Doc,” he said.
“It’s good to see you,” said Darkus, and lunged toward him, until Knightley thought twice and held up his hand to stop him.
“No—not here. Downstairs.”
“You came back for me. I knew you would . . .”
“No, Doc. I came here for transport.”
“Transport?”
“And clothes. There’s not a moment to lose,” Knightley whispered, then closed the closet and crossed the landing to the stairs. “You know, you’ve grown at least eight inches.”
“Wait. Where are we going?” Darkus asked, following him downstairs.
“We? My dear boy, we’re not going anywhere. The game is afoot. I’m going to London, and from there, wherever the trail leads me. You are staying here. If anyone asks, just say you slept through the whole thing.”
“Why? I mean, what sort of game are you talking about?”
“The Combination, Doc. That’s what I’m talking about,” said Knightley, nodding to himself gravely. “I may have been sleeping, but they weren’t.”
“Combination . . . ?” Darkus asked. “What combination?”
“Go back to bed, Doc. This doesn’t concern you.”
“If it’s your concern, it’s my concern,” insisted Darkus.
“Trust me—you don’t want to know.”
Darkus followed his father as he strode through the living room, glancing at pictures and memorabilia on the walls. Knightley paused beside a framed photograph of Jackie in her younger days. She was dressed in a flight attendant’s uniform. Darkus often imagined the moment they met, when his father was on a flight to Switzerland in bad weather, and his mother was pointing out the emergency exits. She always said their relationship was turbulent from the start.
“How is your mother?” Knightley asked, doing his best to sound casual.
“She’s okay,” answered Darkus, trying to keep up with him.
Knightley cast an eye over the kitchen, then turned back toward the entrance hall. “I like what she’s done with the place.” He kept moving, as if he were making up for the years of inertia that had held him back.
Darkus rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. He’d dreamed of this reunion for four years, but this wasn’t exactly how he’d imagined it. “Look, can we just . . . talk for a second?” he said, following his father to the front door.
“Not now. But soon, I promise.” Knightley quietly opened the door and exited into the darkness outside. Then he turned back for a moment and gave Darkus a short, sharp hug. “I’m sorry, Doc.”
Knightley approached Clive’s Jag, removed a wire coat hanger from the jacket of his tracksuit, and bent it into a hook shape. He slid the hook between the driver’s window and the sill, then started jimmying the lock with a swift up-and-down motion.
“Wait a minute,” said Darkus, standing his ground on the driveway, now wearing his hat and coat. Knightley looked up from his work and raised his finger to shush him.
Darkus continued in a loud whisper. “I came to visit you every second I could for the last four years. And now you expect me to just go back to bed?”
“It’s for your own good, Doc,” Knightley replied sharply.
“I believed in you. I told them you’d come back,” he insisted. “You can’t just leave me here.”
“That’s exactly what I propose to do,” said Knightley, returning to the job at hand.
“You realize if that alarm detects the slightest variation in cabin pressure, it’ll wake up half the street.”
Knightley smiled, then answered, “And I’ll be long gone.”
“To the end of the driveway, maybe. It’s got an immobilizer.”
“I suppose you learned that from Clive?”
“Wake up, Dad. You’ve been asleep too long.”
Knightley dropped the coat hanger and frowned. “So what do you suggest?”
“Why not try this?” Darkus opened his hand to reveal the Jaguar key fob swinging like a pendulum.
“Attaboy . . .” Knightley extended his arm for Darkus to throw it to him.
Darkus closed his hand again.
“Don’t be childish,” Knightley said without a trace of irony.
“On one condition.”
“There’s no time for this, Doc.”
“I’m coming with you, at least as far as London. No debates. It’s half-term break, so it’s perfect timing.”
“I can’t take you with me. I can’t afford any baggage.”
“I’m not baggage. I can help.”
“I wish you could,” said Knightley, shaking his head and walking up the driveway toward him until Darkus raised his hand, ready to throw the key fob away into the darkness.
“You wouldn’t . . . ,” Knightley pleaded.
“Try me,” said Darkus.
Upstairs, Clive rolled over in bed, hearing something outside: an unmistakable purr, followed by the crunch of tires on gravel. He leaped out of bed with panther-like speed and ripped open the curtains.
On the driveway below, the Jag was backing onto the street. Then its headlights came on.
“No-no-no-no . . .” Clive grabbed his tiny silk dressing gown and raced out of the room. Outside, the Jag paused as Knightley put it into gear and put his foot on the accelerator. The car burned rubber, sending smoke billowing out of the wheel arches, then it sprang forward, pressing its two occupants to their seats.
Clive burst out of the front door only to see the rear lights fishtail around the corner at the end of the street. The purr became a roar.
Clive watched speechless for a moment, then let out a primal scream: “Jackie . . . !!”
Chapter 6
The Knowledge
Knightley drove silently and intently, his foot pressed to the floor as the car raced through empty streets and joined a long highway. At this hour, a few eighteen-wheelers were the only other vehicles on the road.
After what seemed like an eternity, Darkus broke the silence. “Where are we going?”
“The office,” Knightley answered. Darkus raised his eyebrows. He’d never been allowed entry into his father’s professional world, let alone his base of operations. “We might have time for a cup of tea and possibly a jam sandwich,” Knightley continued. “Triangles, not squares, naturally. Then you’ll be on the first train home.”
“What is the Combination?” Darkus asked.
“I told you, it doesn’t concern you.”
“Is it something to do with a safe?” Darkus went on. “Or a bank?”
“Only inasmuch as they rob them—among other far more sinister criminal activities, which I’m not prepared to discuss.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
Knightley switched on the stereo to drown out the question. Smooth jazz blasted out of the speakers, and he grimaced, pushed a few more buttons to change channels, then gave up and switched it off.
“Who’s ‘they’?” Darkus repeated.
“I don’t remember you being this annoying, Doc.”
“You’re exactly how I remember you,” Darkus said frankly.
Knightley frowned.
“I may not have been the best father,” he admitted. “But my work—well, it didn’t keep normal hours, and it didn’t involve normal people. And if I didn’t talk to you about it, it was for your and your mother’s protection. I don’t expect you to understand that. Your mother certainly didn’t. She thought I was losing my mind.”
“That’s what Uncle Bill said too.”
“Uncle Bill?” said Knightley, turning his head.
“I told him I didn’t believe him,” Darkus explained in a show of unity, but his father didn’t seem to notice.
“What did Bill want with you?”
“He said you’d probably turn up at the house,” said Darkus. “It appears he was right.”
Knightley shook his head. “He never did understand what he was dealing with.”
“Dealing with? What do you mean?”
Knightley began speaking almost to himself, as if a safety valve had been released and he couldn’t control his own mind. “The Combination,” he muttered, “is a criminal organization. It’s a multiheaded serpent—a hydra, if you will—with an almost preternatural ability to remain invisible. Some might call it supernatural. You may see signs—the effects of their operations—but never the organization itself . . . They have contacts everywhere; their reach is so vast. What you see on the TV or read in the newspapers is only a fiction—a mask for their carefully planned and meticulously executed acts of criminal infamy.” Knightley paused for breath, then continued. “And those who manage to unravel the mystery and get to the truth, well, they’re called mad. But when you know the truth, and everyone else believes the lie, who’s crazy then? Huh?”
For the first time in the conversation, Darkus was speechless. Whatever the Combination was, it was the reason his dad was awake and alert—and, by default, the reason they’d been reunited. For now, at least.
Knightley turned to him. “I suppose you think I’m crazy as well?”
“I don’t have the empirical data to make that determination,” Darkus replied.
“Good answer. Neither do I—yet. But I will. Trust me. And when I do, I’ll use it to break the Combination forever.” Knightley pressed the accelerator even harder, speeding under the rows of highway lights that indicated they were approaching London.
The city was still shrouded in darkness. The orange glow of the neon caught the rain in the air, forming an artificial mist over the skyline. Darkus had the curious sensation that he knew where they were going, even though—to his knowledge—he’d never been there before. But in the far reaches of his mind there was a vague memory of an office. Perhaps he’d been taken there once as a young child, or it might have been a made-up memory based on hearsay—a memory of an experience he never actually had.
Knightley guided the car through a series of parks and commons in the outlying boroughs of the city. They passed Richmond Park, the largest of the Royal Parks, and—thanks to King Charles I—home to a sizable herd of red and fallow deer. They continued on through Wimbledon Common, a favorite haunt of Robert Baden-Powell’s during the early days of the Boy Scout movement. Darkus knew his father had promised to take him to all these places, but couldn’t actually recall if he ever had—or if this knowledge was compiled entirely from his own research.
They pressed deeper into the solemn and majestic heart of London, crossing the River Thames, overarched with bridges and overseen by the London Eye, Big Ben, and the Houses of Parliament, all of which appeared to mean little to Knightley. As if on autopilot, he steered the Jag toward north London, and Darkus stopped recognizing landmarks and felt as if he were being led into a rabbit’s warren.
They entered the borough of Islington, once known as a lair of wild beasts, and subsequently a cattle market for the sale of these beasts, before they made way for its current, more upmarket residents. Knightley drove through a maze of back alleys past forgotten warehouses and railway lines until they reached a short residential street with a row of terraced houses, signposted Cherwell Place. The street had an almost imperceptible curve to it, as if it was permanently being observed through a magnifying glass. The odd perspective meant it was mundane yet strangely mysterious at the same time.
Knightley parked the Jag on a double yellow line and quickly climbed out, approaching one of the narrow houses. Darkus went to stand in his wake and followed his gaze up to a dim light on the top floor of the house. Whether the memory was genuine or not, in dreams or reality, Darkus felt certain he’d been here before.
Knightley walked toward the blue door with a brass number 27 on it and pressed the intercom. It crackled; then, after a long pause, a female Polish voice came out of it.
“Knightley Investigations, hello?” the voice said cautiously.
“Bogna, it’s Alan,” said Knightley.
“Alan . . . ?! O mój Boże . . .” she praised the lord, and the door instantly buzzed open.
As Darkus followed his father into the house he heard the thundering noise of someone coming down the narrow staircase. He correctly deduced that the large, middle-aged Polish lady who appeared on the stairs in a dressing gown was in fact Bogna.
“You are alive!” she shouted, crushing Knightley in an embrace.
“Yes, but don’t tell the whole neighborhood,” he answered.
“I’m sorry, Alan. I just thought . . .”
“I know, everyone did. But I’m perfectly fine,” he assured her.
Bogna spotted Darkus standing behind his father and did a double take. “This is Doc,” she announced, grabbing Darkus by the shoulders and inspecting his features.
“It is,” said Knightley. “But he won’t be staying long. I have work to do.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Darkus, then he turned to find his father already pacing up the stairs, and set off behind him.
“The phone keep ringings for over one year,” Bogna explained breathlessly in her broken English, following them upstairs. “Then it was not ringings so often, and now it doesn’t ringings at all. I have keep everything exactly how you left it,” she continued.
They reached the top of the house, and Knightley strode across a small landing to a heavy oak door with his name etched on the outside. He paused a moment, then turned the handle and opened the door. Darkus watched from behind as his father beheld his former office: a large wood-paneled room lined with shelves weighed down with books and periodicals. At the window was a broad mahogany desk accented with Carpathian elm, with a leather office chair and a globe mounted on a brass spindle. A slightly dated computer faced the empty seat, as if the user was temporarily out of the office. There was not a cobweb or a speck of dust in sight. Knightley approached a closet and opened it to find a row of herringbone coats and tweed walking hats, neatly arranged. He fell silent, sparing a moment to take it all in.
“Shall I prepare some sandwich?” enquired Bogna.
“That would be most accommodating. Triangles, not squares,” said Darkus with a nod.
Bogna did another double take, then nodded and thundered back down the stairs. Knightley didn’t respond, lost in thought.
“Dad . . . ?” said Darkus, breaking the silence.
“Yes, Doc?” he answered blankly. He appeared to be somewhere else entirely, his eyes slowly roaming the room, noting familiar objects and mementos.
“Have I been here before?”
“Once, with your mother. A long time ago,” he responded softly.
“Are you going to be working here again now?”
“I only wish I could perform all my tasks from the relative safety of this room. But I fear my enemies will draw me out into the open, where I’m more vulnerable,” he said with a hint of trepidation. “Which is why I must do my best to locate them first . . .”
Knightley walked to a space between two large bookcases, locating a painting of a pastoral landscape. He carefully unhooked the painting to reveal a small, old-fashioned safe recessed into the wall. He spun the dial clockwise, then counterclockwise several times, listening to a series of clicks, u
ntil the lock disengaged and he opened the door.
Inside, the space was empty except for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. Knightley narrowed his eyes. “That was my emergency pack,” he said, perplexed.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Darkus.
“Your mother and I both did once,” he admitted. “It did nothing for my reasoning skills,” he added, then without looking up, called out: “Bogna!”
More thuds ascended the stairs, then Bogna entered the room breathless, awaiting instruction.
“There were several personal items in here,” said Knightley. “What happened to them?”
“Mrs. Jackie took them,” said Bogna with a shrug. “She said it was for, how d’you say, sentimental’s reason?”
“Sentimental reasons?” Knightley asked, puzzled.
“That’s what she say, yes.”
“I’m looking for one particularly sensitive item, which you may recall,” Knightley told her calmly. “A device that contains the sum total of all my notes.” Clearly he was trying hard not to alarm her with the importance of his request.
A lightbulb went off in her head. “Ah—you mean the Knowledges?” she said. Her Polish accent made the words hard to distinguish, the meaning even harder.
“Yes, the Knowledge,” said Knightley impatiently. “What happened to it?”
Bogna shrugged hopelessly and shook her head. “Two men come looking for it, after you went into your coma state.”
“What sort of men?”
“They said they were policemens. I tell them it’s not here, I don’t know where it is. They make a lot of mess.”
“Did you tell them anything else?”
“No. I know the rule,” said Bogna obediently. “Strictly needs to know.”
“Dad?”
“Not now, Doc.”
“What does it look like?” Darkus went on. “This ‘Knowledge’?”
“It’s a hard drive, about yea big, stowed in a small leather case with a strap.” Knightley gestured in the air to aid the description.
“Ah . . . ,” said Darkus deliberately.