K-9

by Rohan Gavin

  The cabbie drove them up a steep hill, past the Hampstead Heath overground station, arriving at a car park overlooking the fields and ponds. Even at this elevation, the sun was still below the treeline and the capital was veiled in an ominous blue shadow. The cabbie’s headlights picked out the empty gravelled lot until, sure enough, Darkus spotted his father’s Fairway cab parked diagonally in the corner nearest the park entrance. Whatever the purpose of his early morning visit, his dad clearly wasn’t wasting any time.

  The rest of the Heath, for as far as the eye could see, was deserted.

  Darkus paid the driver, nearly cleaning out his wallet in the process, and led Wilbur out of the rear passenger door. At once, Wilbur raised his snout to the air like a chef distinguishing between minutely different ingredients, then bobbed his nose around as if searching for one scent in particular.

  ‘Dad . . .’ prompted Darkus. ‘Can you smell him?’

  Wilbur cried, trying to reply.

  Darkus licked his finger and raised it to the dark sky, feeling the saliva evaporate. ‘We’re downwind. We’re in luck,’ he reminded himself. ‘Wind carries sound, and smell . . .’

  Wilbur barked a response, then led Darkus towards his father’s black cab.

  Darkus waited patiently, as Wilbur sniffed around the driver side of the car, then the dog’s tail stood upright and he started tugging on the lead, urgently pulling Darkus towards a large meadow that spanned the length of the ponds.

  Darkus found himself being dragged, running behind Wilbur as they made a beeline across the grassy expanse towards a long, dusty track. Barely able to keep up, Darkus reached down for Wilbur’s collar.

  ‘Wilbur, listen to me. If I let you off the lead, don’t lose me, OK, boy? OK . . . ?’

  Wilbur replied with a two-tone whimper that almost sounded like ‘OK.’

  Darkus unclipped the lead from the collar, and Wilbur bounded through the long grass, which almost submerged him, except for his tail, which remained bolt upright. He was on the hunt. The dog leaped over the larger patches of undergrowth with what looked like unadulterated joy. Darkus suddenly imagined him as a puppy, surging forward without limitation, without anxiety or fear – as if the world, however big, couldn’t contain him. The scared, nervous Wilbur was, for now, a figment of the past. Darkus sprinted to keep up with him, watching the erect tail cut effortlessly through the wilderness like the periscope of a fast attack submarine.

  Wilbur appeared on a bluff in the distance, triumph­antly raised his snout to the air again, then veered off to the right, joining the dust track that was now clearly in view, leading into a particularly dark cluster of woods.

  Incredibly, as Darkus crested the bluff, he saw his father two hundred metres ahead on the same track, his distinctive tweed hat and overcoat blowing in the breeze. As if sensing their presence, Knightley turned around and waved, before shouting out:

  ‘Call him off, Doc. And you too!’ His voice carried on the wind.

  ‘Why?!’ Darkus shouted back. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking for more prints of course. This is my case, Doc, leave it to me! I promised your mother I wouldn’t let any harm come to you.’

  Wilbur was by this time zeroing in on Knightley.

  ‘Dad – wait – !’

  ‘There was something I didn’t show you!’ he shouted hoarsely. ‘Call him off, Doc, for both your sakes!’ Then Knightley turned and ran off into the woods to elude them.

  Wilbur picked up speed to go after him. Darkus froze, then shouted out for fear of losing them both.

  ‘Wilbur! Stop!’

  Wilbur came to a halt, then craned his neck to look at his master, not understanding.

  ‘Wait!’ Darkus ran along the track, out of breath, catching up with him.

  Wilbur’s brow furrowed and his nose twitched impatiently – confused at the conflicting commands.

  ‘I know,’ Darkus said to the mutt. ‘I don’t understand him either.’

  Darkus looked around to discover that they were still very much alone on the Heath. He grabbed a pair of binoculars out of his pocket and trained them down the track and into the woods where his father had just vanished. He adjusted the focus wheel and through the lenses he could just make out his father’s tweed coat moving purposefully between the trees, descending into a dell of some kind.

  Suddenly, the wind picked up, whistling through the landscape, dislodging loose branches and sending waves of leaves rolling along the ground. Darkus lowered his binoculars, watching the air currents race past him through the meadow.

  Wilbur whimpered and his tail sank between his legs. Darkus looked down, confused.

  ‘What is it, boy?’

  Inexplicably, Wilbur let out a soft howl that floated up on the breeze. It was plaintive and sad, but it also sounded distinctly like a warning. For that reason it sent shivers up his master’s spine and set the catastrophiser whirring.

  Darkus pressed his face to the eyecups of the binoculars again, and saw his father’s tweed overcoat moving deeper into the forest and further out of sight. Then, to his horror, Darkus saw something else which made the catastophiser jitter so violently that he had trouble steadying his hands, and felt a film of sweat develop between his skin and the binoculars.

  Something else was in the woods. Something large that was descending into the dell behind his dad. Darkus fumbled with the focus wheel, but couldn’t tell what the thing was, only that it was walking on two legs, and appeared to be a human form.

  ‘Dad!’ Darkus spontaneously called out, lowering the binocs for a moment. But his voice was lost on the howling wind.

  He pressed his eyes to the lenses again, then panned wildly, but his father, and whatever had been following him, was gone.

  Darkus clipped the lead to Wilbur’s collar and set off down the track and into the woods, looping the leather around his clammy hand for fear of it slipping free. He tried to remember his Wing Chun breathing exercises but they had no effect, and his heart felt like it had travelled up through his body and was beating in the back of his throat.

  With unspoken trepidation, Darkus and Wilbur followed the track downhill between several ancient mounds of clay, feeling the temperature drop as they moved into the long shadows of the tree-covered firmament. One after another, they lost their balance on the loose earth, as they descended into the dark heart of the Heath.

  They reached the bottom of the dell, where an ancient tree with three gigantic branches, all covered in thick ivy, extended upwards in a devil’s fork. Spooked, Darkus held up his binoculars again, scanning the woods, but finding no sign of his dad.

  Wilbur pulled him off to one side, past a small footbridge, through a tangle of reeds, following the barren course of a forgotten riverbed. They were moving with stealth, zigzagging to avoid twigs that would break underfoot, until Wilbur led him up a steep incline to an empty clearing surrounded on all sides by a high wall of thickets.

  Darkus recognised it as the clearing he’d found the last time he was searching for his dad – only this time they’d approached it from another direction.

  Wilbur came to a halt and sat perfectly still. Darkus looked down and noticed Wilbur’s nostrils narrowing, and his jowls rising up to bare his teeth in a silent growl. He was facing off with something, but Darkus couldn’t work out what it was. Then Darkus’s visual faculty was bypassed by another one, as he smelled what Wilbur had already detected.

  It was the smell of death, plain and simple. The putrid, damp stench of rotting flesh. Darkus attempted to move forward, but Wilbur wouldn’t budge.

  Darkus followed Wilbur’s line of sight and realised on closer inspection that one wall of the clearing was actually a makeshift blockade, constructed out of branches, vines and leaves. How could he not have noticed that before? Darkus tried to lead Wilbur forward, but the dog stayed frozen on the spot like a statue.

  Darkus let the lead fall to the ground beside Wilbur, and reluctantly walked forward alone, trying not to
let the smell invade his nostrils; but it was impossible, and he felt the foul aroma laying siege to his palate, engulfing his senses and overpowering his brain. He tasted a sour flavour at the back of his throat as his stomach threatened to send its contents back up towards his mouth.

  Not wanting to touch anything, he took a silver Parker pen from his top pocket and extended it in front of him like a wand, until it made contact with a curtain of foliage that acted as a doorway – but a doorway into what? The catastrophiser thumped mercilessly, telling him to run away, but curiosity got the better of it.

  Darkus gently parted the curtain with the pen and peered in.

  The darkness suddenly came alive in a high-pitched chorus of buzzing as hundreds of bluebottle flies flooded through the gap in the curtain, colliding with Darkus’s eyes, nose and mouth. He tried to cry out but couldn’t for fear of them entering his throat. He pursed his lips, removed his hat and swatted at them as more and more billowed out in black clouds of bristly hair and coarse, veiny wings. He systematically brushed them out of his eyes, nose and ears.

  Wilbur turned tail and ran in the opposite direction.

  Darkus felt the flies hitting his face, but the torrent seemed to be subsiding a little. He took another step forward, parting the curtain further, until the foliage slid to one side – to reveal what was behind it.

  Within seconds, Darkus realised he could no longer control the contents of his stomach and was violently sick on the ground.

  Above him, dangling from the makeshift rafters of a cramped, improvised hunting lodge, were dozens of animals – if you could still call them that. They were hung, flayed and disembowelled, all in various states of decomposition – some were only skeletons. Their once pristine fur coats were hung neatly all around, stretched out like perfectly symmetrical butterflies, held in place by sharp, rusted hooks. A few bluebottles still buzzed greedily around the unfortunate victims’ carcasses. Darkus had read about the rituals of game hunting, and this was, without doubt, a ‘hanging room’. It was unclear whether these poor four-legged souls were trophies or game for the purposes of eating – or perhaps the hunter didn’t distinguish between the two.

  Darkus thought his stomach had evacuated itself, but he felt another involuntary heave as he rapidly surveyed the contents of the room, mentally accounting for the various foxes, rabbits, terriers and what appeared to be the skins of some much larger dogs: one a golden retriever and one a red setter. Darkus controlled his retches, pulled out his phone and committed the gruesome gallery to his photo album, the flash repeatedly catching the vacant, staring eyes (those fortunate enough to still have them), trapped for ever in the terrifying moment of their untimely demise. Darkus backed out of the foul room, nearly tripping over himself as he went.

  He stared at the ground for a moment, steadying his nerves and trying to settle his stomach, until he heard something even more chilling: it was his father’s voice, crying out in obvious and uncharacteristic fear.

  ‘Help – ! Somebody – !’ Knightley’s voice echoed across the woods.

  Darkus spun around, feeling the adrenalin surge through his body, setting the catastrophiser to hyper-alert but leaving his limbs as heavy as lead.

  ‘Please – !!’ his father shouted.

  Darkus instantly traced the source of the noise to the narrow opening in the clearing that led to the path at the base of Parliament Hill.

  ‘Dad!!’ he shouted back, as he raced away from the lodge, across the muddy ground and burst through the thorny bushes on to the path. ‘Dad? Where are you?!’

  Darkus craned his neck left and right, but the path was empty, as was the entire park. Then he heard a scuffling noise and looked up, seeing his father just over a hundred metres away, at the top of Parliament Hill, locked in a life-and-death struggle with a massively built male figure. The figure had Knightley in a stranglehold and was trying to wrestle him to the ground. Despite his opponent’s obvious physical advantage, Knightley was still upright, using a series of moves to deflect his opponent’s power to the left and right.

  Darkus looked around, helpless, then put his fingers to his lips and let out a loud wolf whistle. A second later, Wilbur exploded through a set of bushes behind him and with unspoken purpose they set off up the hill to Knightley’s aid.

  The image of the fighting silhouettes blurred as Darkus sprinted up the incline, over the uneven ground, feeling the blood running from his head to his feet. His lungs burned and his eyes struggled to focus, creating the illusion that the two figures locked in combat were one amorphous shape. Wilbur was already a good way ahead, leaping over bluffs and homing in on them.

  Suddenly, the grappling figures toppled behind the skyline of the hill, out of sight.

  ‘Dad!!’ Darkus called out, barely able to breathe.

  Wilbur darted over the horizon next, vanishing behind it as well. Then there was a deafening silence. Darkus only heard the noise of his own chest hyperventilating. The catastrophiser was clattering, in bits. He stumbled the last few metres to the summit of the hill and looked over the edge.

  The massive figure was gone. Strangely, there was no obvious cover in sight, but still, the figure had completely disappeared. The hill extended down on all sides, with London waking up far in the distance. Darkus saw his father laid out on the grass, motionless.

  He ran to where Wilbur was earnestly licking Knightley’s face, which was frozen in a look of terror, his eyes wide.

  ‘Dad . . . ?’ Darkus shook him, trying to get some reaction – any reaction.

  Wilbur withdrew and sat still, looking around, guarding them. Darkus took his father’s head in his arms, finding himself cast once again in an all too familiar role.

  His father’s face slowly relaxed into a look of tacit acceptance and his eyes gently closed, despite his chest heaving and sinking at regular intervals. History was repeating itself. Knightley was, without doubt, having one of his ‘episodes’.

  Darkus used his thumb to raise his father’s closed lids and saw the pupils were indeed fixed and dilated. Wilbur whimpered in an effort to communicate, but Darkus took several moments to compose himself, waiting for his own heart rate to return to normal and his emotions to adjust to this new but not unexpected reality.

  Darkus then reached in his pocket, took out his phone, and dialled.

  Chapter 9

  Taking The Lead

  Bogna genuflected and made the sign of the cross as paramedics attended to Knightley’s unconscious but breathing body. Darkus stayed by his father’s side, explaining the condition to the ambulance technician. Clearly, intense stress was the trigger for these narcoleptic trances – just as it had been in the past – but that didn’t make them any less terrifying. Darkus informed the officers of the local Heath constabulary that he had witnessed an assault of some kind, but that he couldn’t identify the assailant, except to say that he was male and massively built.

  ‘Are there any signs of bite marks?’ Darkus asked the technician.

  ‘Not that I can see,’ she replied, puzzled. ‘Was there an animal involved?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Darkus chose, for obvious reasons, not to inform them of the case he and his father had been working on, or the gruesome scene he’d witnessed in the clearing at the base of the hill. Whoever – Darkus avoided the temptation of calling it ‘whatever’ – had attacked his dad was certainly human in form, and was definitely a male; stealthy, physically adept and cunning as well. This was an intriguing and dangerous combination.

  There was that word again: the Combination. Darkus avoided the urge to credit that shadowy organisation with recent events – although his father would certainly have been looking for that connection. The Combination did, after all, draw its membership from all walks of life, both criminals and law enforcement – perhaps even drawing from the paranormal as well.

  For the time being, Uncle Bill was out of play, and the only person who could help identify the suspect was now in a trance – beside
s, his father’s memory couldn’t be relied upon at the best of times. Once again, Darkus was alone and facing a dark conspiracy beyond his comprehension. He consoled himself with the fact that his dad was in one piece and his vital signs were normal. The question remained: was Darkus equipped to continue the investigation on his own?

  Wilbur watched, confused, as Knightley’s body was stretchered to an ambulance waiting on one of the Heath’s access roads. Knightley was subsequently observed for a few hours at the Royal Free Hospital, before phone calls were received from a government department called SO 42 that none of the doctors or nurses had ever heard of. Then at 10 a.m. Knightley was loaded into a wheelchair and released into Bogna’s care. She drove him straight home to Cherwell Place in the back of the Fairway cab, with Darkus and Wilbur in tow.

  Darkus was relieved to find no dogs watching the office.

  Bogna executed a fireman’s lift and carried Knightley single-handedly up the stairs to his office, where she laid him in his customary position on the sofa, with a tartan blanket and a TV set up nearby. Feeling the need to be near him, Darkus took his dad’s position at the desk, overlooking him. Wilbur quietly curled up at his young master’s feet, exhausted.

  Very aware that he was now alone, Darkus looked at his phone and scrolled to the name: Tilly. Being a Sunday, she would probably be preoccupied with something – an obscure bit of research or a new piece of software – but it seemed to make little difference to whether she picked up the phone or not. If she wanted to take a call, she took it; and if she didn’t, a thousand calls would happily go unanswered.

  After a few rings, Tilly picked up: ‘I can’t talk right now.’

  ‘Are you at home?’ asked Darkus.

  ‘No . . . Are you?’ she replied.

  ‘No . . .’ They both fell silent. ‘Listen, I might need your help with something . . .’

  ‘Look, I’d like to help, really I would, but it’s not a good time.’

  There was something odd in her voice. ‘Not a good time?’ said Darkus. ‘But –’