3 of a Kind

by Rohan Gavin

  Tilly shook her head again, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ her mother instructed.

  The entire Combination watched, paralysed.

  ‘You know it’s the truth,’ shouted Darkus.

  Knightley nodded tenderly to her. ‘He’s right. He’s always right.’

  Tilly spontaneously wriggled out of her mother’s grasp and ran past the boardroom table to join Darkus and his dad.

  ‘Matilda?’ her mother shouted with an edge that made Tilly’s blood run cold. ‘Don’t put me in an impossible position …’

  Knightley knelt over the box on the floor in front of him. He turned to Darkus and Tilly: ‘In the lift. Now.’

  Tilly ran to the lift and pushed the call button. Nothing happened.

  ‘It’s locked,’ she yelled back to the Knightleys.

  ‘You know what to do,’ Darkus instructed her. ‘Hack into the hotel system and override it.’

  Tilly instantly took out her smartphone and began feverishly tapping at the screen to log on to the hotel network. ‘Got signal,’ she reported. Seconds later she had accessed the pyramid’s floorplan and the lift control system.

  ‘You too, Doc. Go,’ ordered his father.

  Darkus touched his dad’s shoulder, then took his hand away, finding his fingers wet with blood. ‘I’m not leaving you,’ he insisted.

  ‘If I take my finger off this detonator, we all go. Don’t you understand?’ Knightley whispered. ‘This is the only way to give you your life back. The life you want and deserve. Until we crack the Combination, you’ll always be looking over your shoulder.’

  ‘Well, I’ve changed my mind,’ stated Darkus, tears blurring his vision. ‘I do want to be a detective. It’s all I’m good at. I want to solve cases …’ he explained, then caught his breath. ‘With you.’

  His father’s eyes welled up. ‘You’ve got your own life to lead now, Doc. You don’t need me any more,’ he added with a valiant attempt at cheeriness.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Darkus pleaded.

  ‘I always knew this trip was a one-way ticket for me. We did have some good times though, didn’t we?’

  Darkus grabbed his dad, refusing to let go.

  Knightley whispered close to his son’s ear. ‘Remember, Doc … what I told you … right from the start. If you believe in something, however outlandish, it might just turn out to be the truth.’

  Darkus looked at him, desperately trying to understand. ‘As usual, I don’t know what you’re on about, Dad –’

  ‘You will. I love you, Doc,’ he stammered. ‘Now go, before I accidentally lift my right index finger.’

  Darkus shook his head, until Tilly appeared behind him and physically pulled him away. Darkus struggled as she dragged him towards the lift, which was now waiting with its doors open.

  Before Darkus could register what was happening, he was inside the pod and the doors were closing, blocking out his father kneeling on the floor by the bomb.

  ‘No!!!’ Darkus shouted through the closed steel doors, hearing his own voice echo back to him.

  As the lift descended rapidly, Darkus felt his stomach rise up through his throat, threatening to escape from his mouth. The gears of the catastrophiser screeched and clanged against each other like the speeding cables in the elevator shaft – processing its worst case scenario of all. Darkus and Tilly sped down the incline, past storey after storey, each reverberating with the stampede of occupants leaving the pyramid in the midst of the thunderstorm. Until Darkus felt his knees seem to rise up through his spine as the lift came to a halt at the lobby level.

  The doors opened on to a scene of pandemonium. Guests and gamblers were flooding across the marble atrium towards the main exit. Among them were hotel workers in Egyptian garb, some guiding scared children. Uniformed police and security guards directed evacuees through the hotel forecourt and out on to the busy, rain-soaked Las Vegas Strip where the blue and red lights of half a dozen police cars were already lining up in the mist.

  Darkus and Tilly made their way through the throng, both lost in their own ways, both simply following the herd. Darkus saw the traffic being blocked off and onlookers gazing up at the pyramid. The surrounding hotels continued to strobe with powerful light displays. Darkus made out a large shape standing by one of the patrol cars.

  ‘Bill …’ he muttered, breathless, taking Tilly by the hand.

  Uncle Bill peered up at the hotel, with one arm round Bogna, and the other round Jackie, in a tight huddle. Then he saw the two teens stumble out of the crowd. ‘Doc! Tilly!’

  A huge fire engine blasted its horn and pulled into the forecourt.

  Darkus hyperventilated, grabbing Bill and his mum, trying to shout over the noise. ‘It’s Dad! He’s up there, on the top fl–’

  Before Darkus could finish, a massive explosion lit up the sky, reflecting off the panes of the surrounding buildings. Cops drew their guns; onlookers screamed, then took cover as the blast blew out the sloping windows on the top floor of the pyramid, sending a hail of fragments in four different directions. As dust and glass rained down over the Strip, it revealed the apex of the pyramid had been completely destroyed, leaving the rest of the building intact. A thin wisp of smoke curled up from the summit.

  Darkus stared up into the sky, raindrops splatting into his eyes, which were blinking in shock and disbelief. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Tilly managed a heart-rending scream. Jackie quickly grabbed both of them, trying to turn their faces away, but they refused.

  Darkus watched as the world started turning before his eyes. The walls of the adjacent buildings began to slant and distort; firemen in high-visibility jackets ran inside the smoking pyramid, which took on even greater proportions, stretching in all directions, threatening to completely consume him. The thunderclouds warped and shuddered. The lights of the hotels elongated into long, continuous streaks. His eyes rolled back and he felt himself starting to pass out.

  Bill wiped his own eyes on his sleeve, then spotted something a short distance away, among a mess of glass shards and plaster. He ambled into the road and picked it up.

  It was a tweed walking hat, shredded and frayed.

  ‘Alan …’ the Scotsman whispered.

  Darkus saw Uncle Bill holding up the hat in dismay and the final threads of his consciousness worked themselves loose. The last thing he remembered was the ground racing up to catch him …

  CHAPTER 26

  FULL CIRCLE

  Five Months Later …

  Darkus was never one to believe in paranormal phenomena. Maybe it was his mother’s sensible nature; or a reaction against his father’s bizarre ideas, which had been such a feature of his short childhood. But now, believe in them he must, and believe in them he did.

  Following their return from America, Darkus and Tilly spent the summer together at Wolseley Close, doing their best to be ordinary teenagers. Clive had been confined, once again, to a court-ordered stay at a mental health facility, in Somerset this time. Jackie diplomatically referred to it as a ‘much-needed break’, though Darkus suspected his stepfather would be away quite a bit longer than the phrase implied. The Winner’s Circle had abruptly been taken off-air due to rumours of Clive’s unacceptable behaviour on set, and it was swiftly replaced by a wildlife programme.

  In secret, both Darkus and Tilly obsessively studied the loose ends of their last case: an extraordinary one, which had taken them across continents, facing their darkest demons and their greatest foes, culminating in an explosion that had allegedly claimed the lives of every soul on the top floor of the hotel. Every soul, that is, except one …

  Incredibly and contrary to all the laws of science, Alan Knightley had been found physically intact, three floors down from the explosion. He had been covered in rubble, white with plaster dust, and had sustained several fractures and a severe head injury, but he was alive.

  His mind, however, was another matter. It had apparently retreated back to its
protective state of trance-like unconsciousness. Uncle Bill arranged for a bed and the best possible care, courtesy of University College Hospital in central London. As word travelled, Darkus and Jackie experienced an outpouring of goodwill. Miss Khan brought flowers once a week. Even Chief Inspector Draycott delivered a box of chocolates and a ‘get well soon’ card, although his handwriting was so poor it was impossible to decipher – despite being studied by an accomplished young detective. Darkus suspected that even Draycott found life a lot less exciting without his father around.

  Once Knightley had been settled into his hospital room and his every need attended to, Bill invited Bogna to take a spin on the London Eye with him. Having secured his own private capsule, at the top of the first revolution Bill plucked up the courage to dig in the depths of his voluminous overcoat and take out an engagement ring, which he then nervously fumbled and dropped – the fateful ring working its way ingeniously through a floor vent and plummeting one hundred and thirty metres into the River Thames below. After a stream of curses, followed by profuse apologies, Bill dug deeper into his overcoat and produced a Hula Hoop from a forgotten crisp packet, which Bogna accepted instead. They then embraced with such force that the capsule visibly rocked on its hinges, causing great alarm to the fellow travellers on the big wheel.

  Meanwhile, Tilly found that her father’s welcome absence gave her a chance to get to know Jackie better. Still reeling from the revelations about her own mother, Tilly routinely shared heart-to-hearts with her stepmum, often combined with visits to the hair salon. Strangely, Tilly started to dress more like Jackie, and Jackie started to change her hair colour frequently and for no apparent reason. Tilly realised that perhaps the mother she had craved had been under her nose the whole time.

  Under the guise of completing her GCSE coursework, Tilly still followed the aftermath of the explosion via her online contacts in the dark cloud. Darkus suspected that – having discovered her mother had been alive all those years, albeit working for the enemy – it would be even more difficult for Tilly to accept her death a second time. It would take several more months, or even years, to retrieve and piece together the DNA from the scene. The familiar faces they’d seen around the Combination conference table had all been notably absent from public life: no photos, no reports. The same went for their former classmate Brendan Doyle, last seen unconscious on the thirteenth floor. It was as if the villains had vanished without a trace. Darkus convinced himself that the Combination had all perished – with the exception of Morton Underwood, who had slept through the entire drama, confined to his own hospital bed just outside London, in a self-induced trance, and still under twenty-four-hour guard. But deep down Darkus knew that, lacking definitive evidence, it was just as possible that the Combination had all survived.

  However, if there was a winner of the game, it was Darkus – for it had proved to him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who he was: a detective, just like his father.

  Through summer, autumn and then winter, Alexis Bateman, still bedecked in tweed, took to arriving at the house with food parcels for Darkus, claiming that his spirits needed lifting. Which spirits, precisely, was another matter. For the parcels were often discreetly accompanied by books on the paranormal, with outlandish theories about everything imaginable, which Darkus consumed with great appetite, leading him to the inevitable question: how had his father survived the explosion? Had he hatched an escape plan that he hadn’t shared with his son? Had he been provided access to another dimension? Or had he just been unbelievably, extraordinarily lucky?

  Finding himself back in the solace of his father’s hospital room, Darkus wondered whether he had stepped through another dimension himself. Or even stepped back in time to the events preceding his first investigation. For here he was every weekend, back at his dad’s bedside, watching the gentle pulse of the ECG machine sketching a green mountain range across the monitor. Only this time Darkus was joined by two other visitors …

  Jackie gently squeezed Knightley’s hand, carefully avoiding the tube running up the sleeve of his gown to an intravenous drip. Her former husband slept a dreamless sleep, except for an occasional flutter of the eyelids, or an even more occasional flare of the nostrils. His hair was neatly parted, his chin was clean-shaven and he looked younger than ever: the way he looked when they first met.

  On the other side of the bed, Tilly kept vigil beside Darkus, both watching for any response from Knightley – the way a pair of fishermen might watch the still surface of a lake, waiting for a ripple that means the bait has been taken. They received no such ripple.

  In the distance, Big Ben began its solemn toll across the capital, running in counterpoint to the jangle of Christmas bells that were presently ringing in the holy holiday. The bed was surrounded by gifts, which may or may not ever be unwrapped.

  ‘That concludes our report for today,’ said Darkus. ‘The Case of the Cracked Combination is, for now … still open.’

  ‘When the DNA samples come back, we’ll make sure you’re the first to know,’ added Tilly.

  ‘Well, the second or third, technically,’ Darkus corrected her.

  ‘My bad,’ Tilly admitted.

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up, remember?’ Jackie told her.

  ‘OK … Mum,’ she replied, still wincing slightly at the word, until it was met by a warm smile from Jackie that seemed to say: one day at a time.

  Footsteps squeaked across the linoleum as a female nurse appeared through the door behind them, clutching a clipboard. ‘Time’s up, I’m afraid.’

  Jackie looked up, disappointed.

  ‘Merry Christmas, Dad.’ Darkus smoothed his father’s furrowed brow.

  Tilly squeezed Knightley’s arm, then Jackie tenderly kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘Can we leave the radio on?’ she asked. ‘He loves Christmas music.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ replied the nurse.

  Jackie reached over and switched on a small radio by the bedside. A rousing performance of ‘Silent Night’ rattled out of a single speaker.

  Knightley twitched and a brief flicker of consciousness crossed his face, causing all three of his visitors to stop in their tracks.

  Darkus felt a rush of expectation soar through him: the prospect of a new case; a new adventure; the return of his beloved parent and partner in crime-solving. But after several moments, with no visible change in his father’s condition, the catastrophiser went quiet, and Darkus reluctantly put it down to a false alarm. He put on his tweed hat, then gently closed the door as the music came to an end.

  The voice of the announcer came over the radio: ‘That was “Silent Night” by Franz Gruber. The perfect combination of Christmas carol and lullaby … The perfect com-bin-ation …’

  By Rohan Gavin

  Knightley & Son

  Knightley & Son: K-9

  Knightley & Son: 3 of a Kind

  Find out more at:

  www.knightleyandson.com

  Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi and Sydney

  First published in Great Britain in January 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

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  Copyright © Rohan Gavin 2016

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN 978 1 4088 6008 3

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  ohan Gavin, 3 of a Kind