by Rohan Gavin
For my mum & dad, who inspired this series
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
BY ROHAN GAVIN
PROLOGUE
THE GAME BEGINS
Private detective Alan Knightley looked perfectly ordinary, apart from the excessive display of tweed, the thousand-yard stare and the fact that he was talking to himself.
‘I read you,’ he whispered into a tiny microphone that extended from under the brim of his hat by his left sideburn, relaying the message to his junior partner. Moments later, Knightley received a response through an equally tiny speaker in his ear canal. He listened carefully, before replying, ‘Copy that. Target’s on the move.’
Knightley moved stealthily out of the café on Baker Street and tipped his hat in the direction of the neighbouring town house, number 221b – once home to another great detective. Then he walked down the busy thoroughfare towards the even busier Marylebone Road, where the rain gave way to sunshine.
Ahead of him was another middle-aged man, of medium height and medium build, with short-clipped dark hair, dark glasses, dark suit and a dark trench coat. The man walked with a strangely eccentric confidence, drawing no attention, despite the occasional twitch of his shoulder, which Knightley knew all too well as part of the pattern of nerves and impulses that made up his arch nemesis: Morton Underwood. For Underwood was the head of the shadowy crime organisation, the Combination; a villain who had apparently died under the wheels of a train in the London Underground, only to return from the dead when forensics connected him to known crime boss (and suspected werewolf), the now deceased, Barabas King.
Underwood turned the corner, heading east on Marylebone Road, moving at a fair pace, although Knightley was certain the man didn’t know he was being followed.
Passing a row of plate glass windows, Knightley used the reflection to scan the surrounding pedestrians, but none of them appeared to notice him. The bystanders all stared ahead and the London traffic crawled along indifferently.
So it appeared the intelligence that Knightley had received was correct. The subject was alone, unguarded – at least for now – and carrying out a private and personal errand.
In fact, this was something of a personal errand for Knightley too – for the man in his sights was once a close family friend, a college pal who had even played godfather to Knightley’s beloved son Darkus.
But that was before Underwood’s descent into darkness and criminality. It was Underwood’s hypnotic powers that had placed Knightley into a four-year coma, resulting in the loss of many of his detective faculties; and it was Underwood who was – inadvertently – the reason for young Darkus’s unlikely rise to fame with the birth of the detective agency Knightley & Son. Although the fate of that agency was now hanging in the balance … After their last case, the Knightleys were in crisis, and the sinister Combination had continued to cast a vast criminal net across London, Europe and perhaps the entire globe.
Just as predicted, after five minutes, Underwood turned right on to Harley Street, home to some of the country’s most eminent doctors. Knightley carried on past the intersection (to ensure he wasn’t being followed) then took the next right, accelerating to a jog as he looped around the elegant blocks – all packed with consulting rooms specialising in everything from terminal disease to hair regrowth. Knightley found himself approaching Harley Street from another angle. Sure enough, Underwood’s polished brogues marched into view at a set of traffic lights, and Knightley ducked behind a doorway to avoid detection. The villain crossed the road, his shoulder flinching as an SUV passed him a little too fast for his liking. Knightley emerged from his vantage point and tailed him at a discreet distance.
Underwood arrived at a tall, stone-fronted building with a column of brass intercoms by the heavy front door. He checked the time on a pocket watch attached to his waistcoat, then extended a gloved finger and pressed the top button. After a few seconds, the door buzzed open and Underwood stepped inside and out of sight.
‘The fox is in the hole,’ Knightley said into his mic. ‘Over to you.’
Underwood entered the doctor’s waiting room without removing his dark glasses. He chose a corner chair and examined the other patients through his tinted lenses: a Middle Eastern couple; a white man in his thirties wearing red trousers; and in a far corner a younger girl with blonde pigtails and painful-looking dental braces, her head in earphones, her face buried in a smartphone. Underwood made no expression and stared ahead at a gilt-edged mirror hanging on the opposite wall.
A minute later, a young receptionist entered the room and asked quietly: ‘Mr Jones?’
Underwood forced a smile, adjusted his dark glasses and followed her out of the room. The other patients didn’t look up from their business. Except for the young blonde girl who pocketed her smartphone, shrugged on a rucksack and walked out into the corridor.
‘Excusth me?’ she lisped through her braces at the receptionist. ‘Isth there a loo around?’
‘Next floor up,’ the receptionist answered.
At the other end of the corridor, Underwood entered the lift and prodded a button. The door closed and the cables whirred to life.
‘Thankths,’ replied the girl and started up the stairs.
Reaching a landing, the girl took out her smartphone and began feverishly tapping a series of commands with one hand, while removing the dental braces and the pigtails with the other, then slipping them into a pocket.
‘Knightley, are you in position?’ she whispered into the mic on her earphones.
‘Ten-four, Tilly. I’ve gained access through the basement. I’m on my way.’
‘Well, don’t hang about. I’m overriding the lift car now.’ Tilly Palmer tapped her smartphone screen again and an activity ball spun, sending the signal. She might be Darkus Knightley’s errant stepsister, and somewhat lacking in grace, but she made up for it in guile and savvy.
Inside the ascending lift, Underwood watched the numbers illuminate one by one, until the floor jolted a bit, causing him to look down. A moment later, the doors opened on to what he believed was the fourth floor. He walked past the usual potted tropical plant to the door with the familiar brass plate, bearing the words: Dr Verbosa – Royal College of Speech Therapy.
Underwood knocked once and turned the handle to let himself in.
‘Come!’ the doctor answered from a high-backed leather chair, which had been rotated to face the London skyline – concealing his identity.
Underwood squinted under his glasses. The doctor appeared to be tending to a window box, but Underwood could have sworn there wasn’t usually a window box there. The wide mirror on the wall to his right was new too.
‘I – I apologise for m-missing our last appointment,’ Underwood explained with his trademark stutter. ‘Some trouble at work. I’ve been p-practising the exercises you taught me.’
‘Nae bother,’ answered the doctor, in what appeared to be a Scottish accent.
‘Doctor Verbosa …?’ Underwood enquired, his suspicions raised, his hand reaching for an inside pocket.
The high-b
acked chair swivelled round, creaking under the weight, to reveal the corduroy-clad bulk of Uncle Bill, also known as Montague Billoch from Scotland Yard’s secretive SO42: Specialist Operations branch 42 – also known in the highest circles as the Department of the Unexplained. Not an uncle by blood, but a cherished member of the Knightleys’ crime-solving family, Bill held a .38 revolver trained directly on Underwood’s chest.
‘A’right, hands where ah can see ’em,’ the Scottish detective announced in his thick Highland brogue. ‘Doctor Verbosa’s still waiting for ye one floor down, ye big balloon. We mucked aboot wi’ the lift.’
Underwood spun and lunged for the door, until it opened by itself and he ran into a wall of Donegal tweed in the shape of Alan Knightley.
‘Hello, old pal,’ Knightley managed, breathless, as he manhandled Underwood back into the privacy of the consulting room and locked the door behind them.
‘A-Alan, what a pleasant surprise,’ fawned Underwood, then looked back at the mirror spanning one side of the room. ‘I see what’s going on now.’
‘Observation was never your shortcoming,’ said Knightley, frisking Underwood from head to toe for weapons. ‘Morality on the other hand …’ Knightley removed a silenced handgun and a switchblade and slung them on the desk in front of Uncle Bill, who inspected them clinically, as if he were still playing the part of doctor. Knightley forcefully sat Underwood down in the patient’s chair. ‘We thought you died under that Tube train. I almost felt sorry for you. I suppose it was all a simple misdirection. A trick of the light.’
‘Something like that.’ Underwood removed his clip-on shades to reveal a pair of bottle-top glasses that made his eyes distort and float like saucers.
Knightley tried to ignore the villain’s gaze, knowing it could be hazardous to his health. ‘You and your forces of darkness have caused me and my family a lot of trouble and strife,’ he went on. ‘Not to mention showing an extremely casual approach to our personal safety.’
‘In other words, yoo’re a murderin’ bahookie,’ Bill added, dropping the weapons into evidence bags and concealing them in his massive overcoat before putting on his homburg hat to indicate he meant business.
‘Your incarceration will be as long and painful as the law permits,’ Knightley warned. ‘But not before we’ve extracted the information we require to bring the Combination to justice.’
‘Hmm,’ replied Underwood and lightly adjusted his seat to face the mirror. ‘Is that Darkus in there, I wonder?’ he muttered, as if to himself. ‘No … He would f-face me in person. So the junior detective must be … otherwise engaged. In that case, it must be Tilly, his faithful – if damaged – stepsister. Like a hound on the scent. Desperate for answers about who killed her mother, Carol … Alan’s f-former assistant. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. Blood really does run deep.’
Behind the mirror, Tilly stood in a makeshift viewing room, watching through the one-way glass, her fists clenched by her sides. A female police officer stood next to her for protection, as the voices echoed through an intercom speaker.
‘I’d advise you to be quiet about that,’ Knightley threatened, his eyes glittering.
‘Would you care to settle this with a game, Alan?’ the villain piped up. ‘A game of wits? A game of chance?’
‘What is there to settle? You lost. We won,’ declared Knightley.
‘It’ll be like the old days,’ said Underwood. ‘Only this time I’m not talking about chess. And I f-fear you may need your son’s assistance again, if you have any hope of a successful outcome.’
‘You’re in no position to play games,’ Knightley responded.
Underwood shrugged, turning back to the mirror, seeing only his own reflection. ‘What if I told you that I had information ab-bout your mother’s death, Tilly? Information that has up until now b-been withheld from you? Then would you play my little game?’
Behind the one-way glass, Tilly’s eyes narrowed as she minutely shook her head, not daring to believe him.
Underwood calmly reached for his waistcoat. Uncle Bill cocked his pistol by way of warning.
‘He’s clean,’ Knightley assured the Scotsman.
Underwood merely took out his pocket watch and observed the time, then swung it gently on its chain, while gazing at the mirror through his thick lenses. ‘Very well. The offer stands. Play the game and find the truth.’
Tilly watched the proceedings from behind the glass, her eyes narrowing further. ‘Wait a second …’
Underwood gazed at his own reflection, his enlarged eyes following the pocket watch travelling back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
‘No – !’ Tilly shouted.
Suddenly, the mirror in the doctor’s office exploded as a chair hurtled through it from the other side. The police officer tried to restrain Tilly but the teen had already kicked out the remains of the safety glass and stepped through, spraying the room and its occupants with gem-like fragments. Underwood sat perfectly still, with the pocket watch still swinging from his hand like a pendulum.
‘He’s hypnotising himself!’ cried Tilly, scrambling towards him.
Knightley and Bill surged forward, but it was too late. The pocket watch dropped to the carpet, the chain snaking around it.
Underwood’s arms fell limp and his eyes glazed over, freezing a smile on to his grim, skull-like face.
Tilly grabbed the man by his necktie and throttled him. ‘Don’t you go to sleep on me … Don’t you dare –’
Underwood’s eyes stared ahead blankly, but his mouth continued to function for a moment, mumbling something: ‘F-fifty-three, sixty-four, chance, a relay, thirteen-thirty-n-nine.’
Tilly raised her smartphone, tapping the numbers on to the screen. ‘It’s a code,’ she stammered excitedly. ‘Damn it, it’s a code.’
Underwood’s mouth fell ajar, and he lost consciousness altogether.
‘Aye, but meaning what?’ asked Bill.
‘I don’t know,’ confessed Knightley.
‘We need Darkus …’ Tilly stated plainly.
‘Aye,’ agreed Bill and set about cuffing Underwood’s limp hands together behind the back of the chair.
‘You know Doc and I are not currently on speaking terms,’ Knightley complained.
‘Then you’d better get back on speaking terms, sharpish,’ barked Tilly. ‘He didn’t come home last night, which is very unlike him. Term’s over, so he can’t be at school. You’re his father. Find him!’
CHAPTER 1
NETHERWORLDS
Darkus burst through the bushes, losing his footing and tearing the elbow of his herringbone overcoat. Blood coursed from a laceration on his arm as he emerged from the undergrowth into the soft, wet grass of a lush meadow that was veiled in ominous shadow. He saw a pair of trees intertwined in a devil’s fork and ran towards them. Then the howl arrived again, even louder and more chilling than before. It was followed by a rapid snapping of twigs as the creature raced through the woods behind him, its paws barely touching the ground.
Under the devil’s fork was a large pond, shimmering in the moonlight. He turned back, seeing the low dark shape of the creature hovering across the meadow in his direction – a matter of seconds from catching him. Darkus stumbled towards the pond and began wading into the murky water, which quickly crept up over his brogues, his overcoat, his tweed three-piece suit and up to his neck. Darkus tried to swim but the weight of his clothes was holding him back. He struggled through the water, getting some way from the shore. Then he turned back to look at the creature, but it had been replaced by an altogether different animal. But it wasn’t possible. This animal was deceased.
It was his beloved German shepherd, Wilbur, wagging his tail, watching from dry land, holding his lead in his mouth as he always did, shaking his snout to beckon him back.
‘No …’ said Darkus, feeling the currents dragging him under. ‘No, Wilbur’s gone. He’s dead.’
Tears started rolling down his face. Until they we
re met by the black pond water bubbling up around his neck, seeping into the corners of his mouth and finally consuming him completely.
Darkus’s head lurched forward, then he sat up, embarrassed, wiping the tears from his face. He was wearing a grey sweatshirt, blue jeans and trainers. He was surrounded by half a dozen teenagers, most wearing gothic clothing, some with mascara, guyliner and nose piercings. They all sat in a circle in a darkened room, lit by a single candle flickering in the centre.
‘That was very good, Doc,’ a girl’s voice whispered from beside him.
‘It’s not Doc … It’s Darkus,’ he answered firmly.
‘OK, Darkus,’ said the girl and turned her face to the candlelight to reveal Alexis Bateman, his fellow classmate and former editor of The Cranston Star. Since their near-fatal encounter with the monstrous Barabas King on Hampstead Heath, Alexis’s blonde hair had gone permanently grey. But she tied it up neatly and Darkus thought it suited her. Gone were her customary raincoat, reporter bag and black cigarette trousers, having been replaced more recently by a tailored tweed ensemble that was distinctly Knightley-esque, complete with a walking hat worn at a jaunty angle. ‘Do you want to tell us more?’ she enquired gently. ‘You’re among friends here.’
‘No. Not right now,’ Darkus answered, self-consciously.
‘I don’t work for the school newspaper any more, remember?’
‘And I don’t conduct private investigations any more,’ he replied. ‘Especially when the subject of that investigation is me.’
‘Guided meditation isn’t supposed to be easy. You’re getting in touch with deeper forces beyond our understanding. Extrasensory perception, the spirit world, call it what you will. You can even talk to the dead … Or so they say.’
Darkus knew all about the outlandish promises of the supernatural, having heard them from his equally outlandish father. He also knew their dangers. Having weighed the possibilities, Darkus remained a disciple of reason. But the fact that he’d even agreed to this exercise was evidence that all reasonable self-help methods had been exhausted.
