3 of a Kind (8 page)

‘Hello, Aaeesha,’ said Knightley, using Miss Khan’s
little known and even less used first name. ‘I haven’t seen you since the parents’ evening.’

Miss Khan nodded prudently. ‘I’m glad you were there. I hope things are improving at home,’ she said, looking from him to Darkus and back again.

‘Well, we’re here sharing some male bonding time, aren’t we, son? The only way we know how.’

‘You could say that,’ answered Darkus.

‘What’ve you got for us, Miss Khan?’ said Tilly, getting down to business.

Miss Khan led the trio to a seating area and surreptitiously reached in her handbag. First she took out a junior-sized electric shaver and handed it to Darkus.

‘Well, in fact I don’t require that just yet,’ Darkus admitted, self-consciously rubbing his hairless chin.

‘It’s no ordinary shaver,’ the science teacher explained. ‘It’s an EMP device. That’s an electromagnetic pulse, to you and I.’

Knightley turned to Tilly. ‘Translation please?’

‘It interferes with machines,’ began Tilly. ‘Blasts them with radio waves that incapacitate their circuitry and render them useless. It can stop a phone, a car, even an incoming missile. Obviously you shouldn’t attempt your first shave on the plane.’

‘I don’t intend to,’ answered Darkus.

‘Next,’ said Miss Khan, reaching deeper into her
handbag and pulling out a compact hairdryer. Tilly’s eyes lit up. ‘It’s a perfectly adequate blow-dryer,’ Miss Khan went on. ‘But it also doubles as a blow
torch
… This is the gas reservoir. If you press this selector button all the way, it will emit a fine gas flame that will melt steel, a doorlock, what have you.’

The Knightleys both glanced at Tilly’s hair, concerned.

‘I’d advise you not to do your hair on the plane either,’ said Darkus.

‘Funny,’ she responded, deadpan.

Knightley waited his turn, watching with anticipation.

‘And for the man who has everything …’ Miss Khan produced a small silver medallion on a chain, passing it to the elder detective.

‘Does it garrotte people?’ enquired Darkus.

‘No, it protects them,’ she replied. ‘It’s a Saint Christopher medal, the patron saint of travellers.’

‘I didn’t know you were religious,’ Knightley murmured. ‘Or superstitious?’

‘It belonged to my father,’ she answered. ‘Bring it back in one piece.’

Knightley examined the small silver disc, with the engraving around the edge:
Saint Christopher Protect Us.
‘Thank you,’ he responded, carefully coiling the necklace around his fingers and sliding it into his top pocket.

‘Good luck, Alan.’ Miss Khan grabbed the two teens around the shoulders. ‘Same goes for you two. And don’t forget your assignments over the summer break.’ She returned to her default role of schoolteacher. ‘I’ll see you in September, safe and sound, with your coursework completed.’ She nodded to Knightley, as if indicating that he should take care of himself, and more importantly, his two young charges.

‘Will do,’ said Tilly, throwing a salute.

Darkus watched the science teacher raise her headscarf and walk away in the direction of the train platforms. ‘What about Mum?’ he questioned his dad.

‘Hmm,’ said Knightley, absently tapping his nose.

Darkus was no stranger to body language and deduced exactly what his father was thinking:
Mum’s the word
.

‘Well?’ Darkus asked anyway.

His father stared at the departures board, losing himself in the flashing numbers again. ‘If we’re playing a game with the Combination, which I am quite certain we are –’

‘Though we don’t have conclusive evidence of that yet,’ Darkus interjected.

‘For once, Doc, I’d ask you to trust my judgement.
If
the Combination is the orchestrator of this peculiar problem we face, it is essential that we compartmentalise your mother, and more importantly – given his fragile history – your stepfather, Clive. For their own safety.’

‘By compartmentalise you mean …?’

‘Maintain plausible deniability.’

‘In other words …?’

‘Don’t tell them a thing,’ instructed Knightley.

‘Why didn’t you just say that?’ said Tilly, doing a panoramic eye roll.

‘Don’t worry, Doc,’ his father assured him. ‘I’ll take full responsibility. Now, once we’ve checked in, we have an hour before we’re required to be at the gate. I for one feel the need for some retail therapy.’

Tilly’s face lit up. ‘Me too!’

‘Are you sure we can afford all this, Dad?’ asked Darkus as the trio emerged from three separate changing rooms, each outfitted in khaki-coloured cotton shirts and linen shorts, sporting a distinctly tropical flair.

The trip through security had been uneventful and Miss Khan’s gadgets had not set off any alarm bells. Now Knightley Senior seemed determined to enjoy himself.

‘Money’s for spending, Doc. And I haven’t seen the sun since long before my “episode”.’

‘Well, I don’t care if you can afford it or not,’ said Tilly. ‘I’m liking my style.’ She put on a pair of big sunglasses and struck a pose in the mirror.

The Knightleys adjusted their safari jackets and stared down at their exposed white legs.

‘Well, it’s not exactly our natural state …’ Knightley admitted, as they squinted, examining themselves in the mirror. ‘But I think we could pass for natives.’

‘California is a hot and arid climate, so obviously tweed is out of the question,’ observed Darkus. ‘However, with the use of a reasonable factor sunscreen, I believe we’ll blend in within a few days. British tourists are usually given away by their refusal to remove their vests or to wear sunscreen, hence their tendency to go bright red, creating what’s known as a “lobster tan”,’ he explained.

‘Good point, Doc,’ his father concurred.

Tilly looked at the pair of them and shook her head.

Knightley called over to the sales assistant, ‘We’ll take one complete outfit in every colour you’ve got. And don’t worry about wrapping them.’

After visiting an expensive luggage shop, the three travellers packed their new belongings into three carry-on wheelie bags and made the trek to the departure gate. Darkus remained mystified by his father’s unexpected fit of holiday spirit, but put it down to nerves regarding what might await them on the other side of the pond – American slang for the Atlantic Ocean. It was now approaching forty-eight hours with no contact
from Bogna. Her behaviour in the surveillance footage was inexplicable, and her ultimate role in the mystery equally so.

The other problem weighing on his mind was: why America? To get them off their home turf? To dazzle them with freedom, justice and supersize fries? Or to lure them into a trap, five thousand miles from their natural habitat? One thing Darkus did know was that if Bogna was bait of some kind, then they were taking it: hook, line and sinker.

As they approached the gate, passing the row of hulking Boeings beyond the glass, Knightley had one last embarrassment in store for Darkus on British soil.

‘I wonder if you could help us,’ Knightley asked the uniformed woman in red behind the airline departure counter. ‘The kids have suffered a terrible shock, losing someone very close to them, and I wondered if it wouldn’t be too much trouble … to upgrade us. They’re taking it really hard,’ he added.

‘We don’t have any seats in Premium Economy,’ the woman in red responded, before breaking a smile. ‘But we do have three in Upper Class.’

‘Outstanding.’

The Knightleys and Tilly settled into their seats across from each other at the front of the plane, experimenting with the fold-down flat beds and the entertainment systems. Knightley Senior sipped a glass of champagne and fastened his seat belt tightly across his waist.

Darkus browsed a selection of movies, before switching off the screen in order to focus his mind on the facts: Bogna was missing, having fallen victim to a honeytrap, performed by a professional actor, and engineered by the mysterious Clorr Entertainment, who had conspired to spirit the unfortunate housekeeper to the United States. Darkus used the onboard wi-fi to conduct a brief enquiry of Clorr Entertainment, but all its employees had automatic out of office replies, its owners were untraceable, and its addresses, real and online, were currently ‘under construction’. All this while Underwood lay unconscious in a secure hospital ward. Darkus found the wheels of
his deductive mind spinning hopelessly, lacking the connective tissue to gain traction. He turned to Tilly and found her staring at her phone, watching the timer counting down: 61:45:03 – 2 – 1 …

‘Any update?’ he asked.

‘A few fragments of emails. Nothing about who the Combination are, or where I can find them. Nothing more about the murder.’ The mention of her mother’s death brought a ghostly pall over Tilly’s face. ‘Nothing relevant. They’ll ping me when the drive is readable.’

‘If you want my assistance, I’m all ears.’

‘I’ll let you know when I’m ready to share,’ she said, toying with her sunglasses. ‘You know, your dad’s all right. Weird … but all right.’

The aircraft nudged back from the terminal gate and taxied across the byways towards its designated runway.

Knightley Senior shifted anxiously in his seat as the jet engines droned to life. He leaned across the aisle to the others. ‘I understand neither of you have travelled to the States before, so when we disembark in Los Angeles, meaning “City of Angels” – also known as LA for short – I’ll ask you, for once in your lives, to follow my lead. The thing about America is, everything’s bigger. The cars, the characters … especially the sandwiches. And I can’t promise they’ll be triangles and not
squares. But we’ll survive. And we will find Bogna, mark my words.’

‘The trail will be cold,’ replied Darkus. ‘How are we supposed to navigate a foreign city?’

‘Every investigation is like a foreign city, Doc. We simply read the clues and make our deductions, just as we do on home soil … Trust me.’

The bulbous engines on either side of the fuselage reached a deafening whine as the massive aircraft accelerated to full tilt, pinning the trio in their seats.

Knightley slipped the chain of the Saint Christopher medal around his neck, then gripped the seat with both hands as the g-forces took effect.

The ground fell away, the motorways and buildings were reduced to toddler toys, and the plane passed through the cloud layer and into the flat blue sky, approaching cruising altitude.

Darkus turned to his father, whose eyes were clamped shut, his nostrils flared and his nose whistling with every inhale and exhale.

‘Dad?’ Darkus whispered. ‘Dad …?’

His father appeared to be unconscious.

Tilly turned her attention away from the window. ‘Is he …? Has he …?”

‘I thought this might happen,’ Darkus sighed, reaching over to check his father’s pulse, which confirmed that
his dad was experiencing one of his ‘episodes’: a narcoleptic trance, brought on by stress. ‘Mum said he never was a good flyer.’

In what had become a regular occurrence, Darkus found himself without a supervising adult. He felt the familiar sick feeling in his stomach and hoped his father’s lapse would be shorter than previous ones. He explained the unusual condition to the flight crew who set aside his father’s meals in case he woke from his trance at some point during the twelve-hour flight. Tilly busied herself with coding on her smartphone while Darkus set his wristwatch to show Los Angeles local time, which was eight hours behind British Summer Time. Then he tried to set his body clock by settling down for some sleep. Whether his dad was a working partner or not, Darkus would require all his mental powers for this case.

As the plane followed its course, the sky appeared to bend, following the curvature of the Earth. Darkus drifted in and out of consciousness, first finding Tilly on her smartphone, then halfway through a Hollywood action movie, then curled up under a blanket, dead to the world. Knightley Senior continued to breathe heavily, oblivious to changing continents and time
zones, wrapped in a duvet by a flight attendant, unconscious but still sitting bolt upright.

Darkus stretched his legs a few times, knowing from his research that it was the best defence against deep vein thrombosis, or blood clots: a common problem among long-haul flyers. He also flexed his father’s legs for him, as he’d seen the nurses do so many times during Knightley’s four-year coma state. For comfort, the flight attendant had replaced his dad’s brogues with a pair of red slippers.

What Darkus didn’t notice was a teenage boy sitting a few rows behind him, dressed casually in sunglasses, headphones and a baseball cap pulled low to obscure his face – but watching Darkus and Tilly’s every move and tapping notes into his smartphone.

Darkus was woken by the flight staff raising the shades on the windows. He leaned up and looked out at a blazing orange sunset, glaring down over a range of dusty hills, dotted with palm trees, white houses and mansions. Below the hills was a layer of soupy-looking smog, similar to what he imagined lurking in the streets of London in Victorian times. Only this smog didn’t creep around gaslights and hansom cabs; it crept around a cluster of glass-clad skyscrapers that reflected the hard desert light,
surrounded by a seemingly endless sprawl of low-lying homes stretching in all directions. The streets were arranged in a near perfect grid, overlaid with a tangled web of ten-lane-wide freeways, full to capacity with gleaming cars, trucks and lorries. Darkus recognised the landmarks: the funnel-shaped Capitol Records building with the needle pointing upwards; the familiar letters of the Hollywood sign propped on a hillside.

But the overwhelming thought on Darkus’s mind was: how on earth would they find Bogna in a city of this magnitude?

The captain’s voice arrived over the PA system: ‘We’re beginning our descent into LA. The local time is just after 7.05 p.m. It’s currently a balmy twenty-seven degrees, that’s eighty-one Fahrenheit, with a
combination
of gentle winds and a coastal marine layer to the west …’

Knightley Senior stirred, his arms jolting to life. ‘The Co – the Cohhhhhm – the Combination!’ His eyes popped open, taking in his surroundings. ‘Doc?’ he blurted. ‘Where am I? And why am I wearing these ungodly slippers?’