by Rohan Gavin
The stampede spread through the auditorium as bodies bumped into each other, clattering into their seats. Darkus examined the rows of eager faces staring at the empty stage. Lights panned and strobed the crowd, which responded with a sea of mobile phone screens, held aloft to capture the moment.
Seconds later, the heavily synthesised Winner’s Circle theme music pumped through the sound system, accompanying a giant graphic of a microphone in a gold halo. The halo exploded into smithereens, coaxing the audience towards fever pitch. A series of words flashed up on the Jumbotron screens, one after the other: Talent. Looks. Determination. Who will YOU choose to join … The Winner’s Circle?
Then a deep, sonorous voice echoed overhead: ‘Welcome to week three. Who will enter the circle to win big cash prizes? Who will get ejected …? Let’s hear from our three judges …’
An explosion of white light stunned the audience as three figures appeared silhouetted on the stage: a short man with white hair and a blazer; a statuesque woman in a barely-there sequinned dress; and Clive, striking a pose in his shiny suit, complemented by a dazzling pair of white trainers. All three judges waved to the audience as the music reached a crescendo. A camera on a crane swung past, taking in the scene.
‘Please welcome …’ The deep voice announced the first two celebrity judges – before reaching Clive.
‘And … Cliiiiiive Paaaaalmer!’
Clive bowed deeply, almost touching the floor with his nest of hair, which had been expertly coiffed to appear fuller and darker with a glossy sheen.
‘Judges, take your seats.’
The judges strode arm in arm down the runway to the panel and took their positions. The music faded and the audience hushed in anticipation. Just then, a different noise reverberated across the auditorium. It was a phone ringing with the distinctive ringtone of an Italian car horn. The audience murmured in protest. The camera panned across the chamber, looking for the source of the noise.
Clive cranked his head, irate, searching for the culprit, until he realised the ringtone was strangely familiar: in fact, it was his own. His eyebrows arched as he reached into the inside pocket of his suit and pulled out his hitherto missing mobile phone. The entire arena fell silent. Not sure what to do, Clive cringed, then answered the call.
‘Debbie …? Yes, I’ve found my phone.’
Clive stormed through the backstage corridors, accompanied by a director wearing headphones, resting a hand on his shoulder to console him.
‘Don’t worry, we can edit it out of the repeat,’ the director suggested.
Clive panted, ‘It was the most embarrassing moment in over fifteen years of broadcast telly.’
‘Well, to be fair, it wasn’t as embarrassing as what happened on Wheel Spin,’ the director added, trying to help. Clive spun, his hackles raised. The director changed tack. ‘The producers feel it was a very strong show. They told me to say congrats –’
‘I want Debbie gone. Fired. Finito,’ Clive barked.
The director motioned with his hands to calm the situation, until Clive’s phone rang again with its distinctive Italian fanfare.
Clive turned to the director. ‘Can’t talk any more, Keith –’
‘It’s Ken.’
‘Ken, Keith, whatever. My agent’s on the horn.’ Clive answered the call. ‘Yes, Veronique?’ A voice rattled through the phone. Clive responded, ‘A new opportunity?’ His face broadened into a jowly grin. ‘Well, you know me. Show me the monaaayyy.’
Clive hung up and pushed through a set of double doors to find Jackie and Darkus waiting for him in the artists’ parking area. His face dropped.
‘You on the other hand, Darkus, you’re a bad penny. A bad omen. A bad spark plug. A lemon.’
Darkus withstood the verbal bombardment, which he was quite used to.
‘Clive!’ Jackie reprimanded.
But her husband stood his ground. ‘That’s the last time I have you two here to distract me. Remember: I’m in the winner’s circle now, Jax, and I intend to stay there.’ He waved to his waiting stretch limo. ‘Driver?!’
The limo pulled forward and came to a halt, then the driver tipped his cap, swiftly opening doors for the trio to climb inside.
The limo was warm and quiet, but Darkus’s catastrophiser inexplicably began whirring, noting the driver’s eyes shifting in the rear-view mirror as the engine idled. Jackie sat back in her leather seat and looked out of the tinted window. Clive reached for the minibar and sighed.
‘Driver, I asked for hummus and pitta? Hell-ooo?’
The driver hit the accelerator and the limo lurched away, causing Clive to spill his drink down his front.
‘Ruddy hell! Driver?!’
‘Dad …?’ Darkus asked.
Clive turned to his stepson, confused. ‘Huh?’
‘Not you,’ Darkus corrected him. ‘Him …’ He pointed to the driver, having worked out his true identity.
‘Sorry about that, Clive,’ conceded Knightley Senior, removing his disguise and resting the chauffeur’s cap on the dashboard. ‘Hello, Jackie.’
‘Oh, hello, Alan,’ she replied, unfazed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Yes. What are you doing here?’ Clive demanded angrily, before adding: ‘Did you watch the show?’
‘I find light entertainment dulls the mind,’ Knightley responded frankly, then directed his eyes across the rear-view mirror to his son. ‘Doc, I need to speak to you urgently.’
‘I already gave you my answer,’ said Darkus.
‘“No” is not an option this time,’ his father countered.
‘What’s this all about, Alan?’ Jackie asked, sensing something wrong.
Knightley paused, his brow furrowing. ‘It’s about Bogna …’
The limo turned out of the auditorium gates and fishtailed into the night, its carriage lights vanishing in the fog.
CHAPTER 4
THE SITUATION ROOM
The limo emerged from the mist on to Wolseley Close and parked in the driveway of Clive and Jackie’s mock-Tudor house, alongside a white Transit van, which was blocking in Clive’s new Aston Martin.
‘What the hell is this?!’ Clive yelled at the van as he shimmied between the vehicles.
‘The “Moby Dick”,’ replied Darkus, recognising Uncle Bill’s aptly nicknamed mobile command centre.
‘Well, it’s almost touching my Aston!’
Clive opened the front door and stomped upstairs complaining of a migraine while Darkus followed his parents into the living room where Tilly sat cross-legged on the sofa and Uncle Bill erupted from his leather armchair.
‘A’right, Doc? Aye, ah’ve missed ye, laddie.’ The Scotsman smothered Darkus in a meaty embrace.
‘Thanks, Bill. How’s the back?’ Darkus enquired, in reference to the injury his colleague had sustained on their last case.
‘Aye, well, put it this way,’ said Bill, ‘I will nae be “twerkin’” anytime soon, but ah cannae complain, Doc. Does this mean yoo’re back on the team?’ he pleaded.
‘We’ll see,’ said Darkus, nodding an awkward greeting to his stepsister before taking a seat at the opposite end of the sofa from her.
Tilly’s hair – which was liable to change colour at any moment – was currently dyed jet-black, indicating the grave circumstances. To his dismay, Darkus noticed she was also wearing a tweed waistcoat.
‘Haven’t seen you around much,’ she muttered by way of a greeting.
‘I hear you’ve been busy,’ Darkus answered resentfully. ‘Nice waistcoat,’ he added, then addressed the others. ‘Shall we proceed?’
Knightley Senior drew up a chair to join the huddle. Darkus was reminded of his first mission briefing, in this very room, with his father and Uncle Bill. Those were the good old days, before he knew the sacrifices that being a detective would entail.
In a call to order, Knightley steepled his fingers grimly and started talking. ‘Yesterday evening our dear friend and trusted employee, Bogna, kept an appointment wit
h a gentleman she met online,’ he began.
‘Really?’ said Jackie. ‘Bogna?’
‘She did not return home last night, and we’ve not heard from her since,’ said Knightley. ‘In fact, her mobile phone is switched off. I don’t need to tell you this is highly out of character for her.’
‘Aye,’ said Uncle Bill anxiously, creaking in his armchair.
‘So we’re assuming she may have suffered an accident, perhaps amnesia?’ Darkus asked with concern, before his slightly rusty detective mind arrived at a more sinister explanation. ‘Or perhaps she’s being held somewhere against her will …’ he concluded.
Knightley frowned. ‘That is our assumption.’
Jackie’s normally placid face clouded over. Tilly looked to Darkus, concerned. Darkus glanced away, still smarting from the fact that his stepsister had clearly taken his place as his dad’s partner in crime-solving. Childish as it might have seemed in the circumstances, Darkus couldn’t pretend everything was normal, when things were very, very far from normal.
‘What do we know about this “gentleman” she met online?’ Darkus addressed his father.
Tilly ignored the step-sibling tension and answered for Knightley. ‘I conducted a cursory search of Bogna’s email inbox – approved by Alan, naturally …’
Darkus flinched at Tilly using his dad’s first name – as if she and ‘Alan’ were old friends or colleagues, instead of acquaintainces joined by circumstance – not blood. Still, Darkus maintained a professional attitude and listened.
Tilly continued, ‘I discovered that Bogna held an account with an online dating site called Hearts of Poland. Here’s a printout of her profile picture and online bio.’ She distributed several pages showing a much younger photo of Bogna standing in a poppy-filled meadow wearing shorts.
Uncle Bill raised his eyebrows and folded the page, tucking it into one of his voluminous inside pockets. ‘Dae go awn, Tilly.’
‘Under “likes”, she listed cooking, travel and long walks on the pavement. Under “dislikes”, she put secrets … and bad people.’
Knightley nodded sombrely and gestured for Tilly to continue.
‘She exchanged a few messages with the manager of a restaurant in Hornsey, Marek Pielucha, but we ran some background on him and he checks out. He has a rock solid alibi: he worked all evening at the restaurant, so he appears to be kosher. The real person of interest is someone named Theo.’
Uncle Bill shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
‘Theo what?’ probed Darkus.
‘We don’t know yet. His username is “Theo K”. They exchanged several messages online and planned to speak this week. The Hearts of Poland server is surprisingly robust. I wasn’t able to access any of his personal data. Only this …’
She passed round a profile printout, showing a darkly handsome European man with slicked back hair and a carefully groomed walrus moustache.
‘Well, I suppose she might find him attractive,’ remarked Jackie.
‘I smell a rat,’ said Knightley.
‘Aye, a big ’un,’ Bill added. ‘She’d nae’er go for a wally like thaa’.’
‘I agree. The match is not a convincing one for a number of reasons,’ Knightley pointed out. ‘Either this Theo has a very particular type, or …’
‘Or it’s a trap,’ said Tilly, completing his thought. ‘With Bogna as bait.’
‘Set by whom, to catch whom?’ said Darkus.
‘Set by the Combination … naturally,’ responded his father, returning to his age-old conspiracy theory. ‘To catch us.’
‘It’s too soon to make that assumption,’ Darkus suggested, attempting to slow his dad’s rush to judgement.
Bill shifted in his seat. ‘In the past twintie-four hoors there’s been a rise in “chatter” between several Combination jimmies, on the phone, text and email. Thaa’ would indicate the game is afooot.’
‘Underwood challenged us to a game,’ Tilly reminded them. ‘Maybe this is it. We took one of theirs, now they’ve taken one of ours.’
‘Or maybe Bogna just met the man of her dreams,’ Darkus countered. ‘Apparently love can cause people to act out of character.’
‘And you’d know how?’ snapped Tilly.
‘It’s statistically proven,’ Darkus replied. ‘Studies suggest that by the time we’re of marrying age over fifty per cent of couples will meet online. Bogna must have joined this dating site for a reason.’
‘And my feminine intuition tells me what it is,’ said Tilly.
‘Proceed,’ said Darkus.
‘Bogna was only going on internet dates to attract the attention of someone she already knew,’ Tilly elaborated.
Uncle Bill violently cleared his throat.
Darkus put two and two together. ‘I see …’
‘The silly moo,’ Bill sobbed. ‘Oh, Boggers,’ he raised both his chins to the ceiling to address the absent housekeeper, ‘if ah couldae done things differently, don’t ye think I would hae done?’
Knightley placed a sympathetic hand on Bill’s gigantic shoulder. ‘Love is a fickle beast.’
Jackie raised her eyebrows in bewildered agreement.
‘All this banter doesn’t change the facts,’ Tilly advised. ‘Bogna is missing. Her phone is switched off and she hasn’t made contact with any of us.’
Darkus racked his brain. ‘What about her mobile provider?’
‘We’re awaiting records from them,’ she answered, ‘which should give us this Theo’s number, a call history, text log and, with luck, a ping from a cellular phone mast to help us triangulate her last known position.’
‘Has the Met been informed?’ said Darkus, referring to the London Metropolitan Police Service.
‘Nae,’ replied Bill. ‘Mah department will handle this, personally. Whoever scrobbled her will feel the full weecht of the law.’ The others weren’t exactly sure what he’d said, but they got the message. ‘Whatever the cost,’ Bill clarified.
However, Darkus knew the Department of the Unexplained was already feeling the impact of far-reaching budget cuts, and a missing housekeeper was hardly going to merit a major government response. And the catastrophiser was humming and rattling at the back of his mind, telling him that Bogna’s disappearance, coming only days after the Combination’s number one agent had been apprehended, was too odd to be chance. In ‘the Knowledge’ – his father’s collection of case files, which Darkus had committed to memory – the cardinal rule of any investigation was: never succumb to the luxury of coincidence. Setting aside his increasingly illogical and unruly emotions, Darkus realised that Underwood’s arrest and Bogna’s disappearance had to be connected. Perhaps his father was right: maybe the Combination had got her.
‘While we wait for the phone records,’ Darkus reflected, ‘Bill, have your men scour CCTV footage in the area of Cherwell Place.’ He turned to his father and Tilly. ‘Meanwhile, I suggest you make an appointment at the Hearts of Poland office first thing tomorrow morning and do some old-fashioned detective work. Technology can’t always provide the answers we’d like it to.’
Tilly shrugged. ‘It’s never let me down.’
Darkus frowned at the bad blood between them, knowing that if Bogna was in trouble she’d need him, his father and Tilly on the same team – not opposing ones.
‘Will you be joining us?’ his father asked him, trying hard to disguise the fact that he was begging.
Darkus paused, torn between the detective life he knew, the teenage life he’d tried to know, and the ultimate realisation that maybe he didn’t know anything at all.
The question mark hanging in the air was supplanted by the two-tone chime of the doorbell – followed by a sharp rap on the front door. All heads turned, fearing the worst. Tilly checked their home CCTV remotely from her phone, which was wirelessly connected to a security camera over the entrance. It showed an image of a burly man waiting impatiently on the welcome mat, picking something out of his teeth. ‘It’s Draycott,’ she said, identify
ing the local police inspector who had appointed himself the Knightleys’ nemesis.
‘I’ll handle this,’ said Knightley Senior. He nodded protectively to Jackie, then strode through the entrance hall and opened the door.
‘Interrupting a dysfunctional family gathering, am I …?’ whined Draycott.
Knightley glanced over the man’s casual attire with disdain: a pastel polo neck sweater, a pair of permanent crease trousers and some tassly loafers. ‘Are you off duty, Inspector, or is this “casual Friday”?’
‘It’s Chief Inspector. How many times must I remind you?’
Knightley tapped his cranium. ‘You know me – brain like a sieve. Speaking of which, how’s the collapsed lung?’
Draycott winced at the mention of the ill-fated werewolf hunt on Hampstead Heath that he and Clive had conducted during the Knightleys’ last case. ‘It’s fine, as a matter of fact.’ The inspector unconsciously massaged under his left man-boob, which was just visible through his sweater. ‘The truth is, I’d popped by to see if Clive – our local celebrity – was free for a capp-u-ccino,’ he announced, employing the Italian pronounciation. ‘But my keen powers of observation couldn’t help noticing some unusual vehicles in the driveway. As a matter of course, I ran the registration of the white Transit van, and it appears to be unregistered, which sadly – for the owner at least – is against the law.’
‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’
‘Fighting crime is a 24/7 business, Alan.’
‘And you’re wasting precious time,’ replied Knightley. ‘If you had the necessary clearance, you’d know that that licence plate is unregistered because it’s a government plate. SO42. Specialist Operations.’
‘Then I deduce that your son and that extremely large Scotsman are on the premises?’ Draycott pressed him. ‘Might I ask what you’re working on?’
