3 of a Kind (22 page)

‘I realise that.’ Knightley nodded towards a doorway at the back of the room, where two figures were standing: one taller, one smaller in stature.

‘Tilly?’ Darkus called out.

‘I’m OK, Doc,’ her voice came back, quavering and broken. ‘I’ve found Mum. Look …’

The figures emerged, resolving into Tilly and an attractive woman in her late forties with locks of curly auburn hair, tied back neatly, in keeping with her tailored business suit. There was something familiar about her features: the striking eyes, the dimples on either side of her mouth. Without the need for deduction, Darkus knew instinctively that this was Carol:
Tilly’s mum
.

Darkus spun to his father accusingly. ‘You
knew
?’

‘I knew that Carol had joined the Combination in the months before her death. She was helping me locate Underwood after his disappearance. Then I found out she was collaborating with him. I could only deduce that she had fallen under the spell of
The Code
herself.’ Knightley stared across the room at his former assistant and once trusted friend, Carol Palmer – the sight of her and the memory of everything becoming almost too much to bear.

‘I did what my conscience instructed me to do, Alan,’ she answered calmly.

‘To fake your own death and abandon your only daughter? I can believe a lot of things, but that one’s hard to swallow. It must have been covered up at the highest levels – doctors, coroners, law enforcement. And most of all, in your own
heart
, or what’s left of it.’

Darkus watched, lost for words. He looked to Tilly, desperately trying to read her expression, as if it was the ultimate case to crack, but it was too complex – and perhaps Tilly couldn’t make sense of it either. Her eyes were wet, her mascara running, but the tears were as much fear as joy. Her face had the troubled innocence of a child who’d opened their long-awaited Christmas gift only to find it was something different entirely – something terrifying: a Pandora’s box, the contents of which she could not unsee.

Carol ignored Knightley and addressed his son directly: ‘I imagine you have a burning question, Doc … You want to know why you’re here, yes?’

Darkus looked to Tilly again, receiving no feedback.

‘The answer is simple,’ Carol went on, her face implacable. ‘You’ve completed the game, and now it’s time to receive your reward. We’d like to make you an offer …
Join us
.’

Darkus looked at Tilly, expecting a signal, something to indicate that they were still on the same side.
Weren’t they?

‘You must be joking,’ Knightley Senior blurted. ‘You might have us in a corner this time, but we’re not stupid. Or immoral.’

‘No offence, Alan, but your black and white ideas of right and wrong are outdated. It’s all shades of grey now. And whether you join us, or not, is irrelevant. I convinced Underwood to let you live, albeit in a coma state for all those years. It was Darkus who resurrected your career and became the single biggest threat to our organisation. That’s why, with all due respect, it is Darkus we want on our side.’ She appealed to the junior detective. ‘With or without your father.’

‘We come as a package,’ replied Darkus, indicating his dad and Tilly. ‘
Three of a kind
.’

‘Tilly has already made her decision, haven’t you,
darling?’ Carol put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘She’s already got so much of me in her. It’s hard to believe she didn’t connect the dots sooner.’

Tilly felt her mother’s touch but didn’t move, like an injured animal, too traumatised to react, even to apparent affection.

Undaunted, Carol pressed on. ‘Darkus, we’re offering you a position in the Combination. It’s a one-time offer and it comes with complimentary membership to some of the most exclusive clubs and organisations in the world, along with access to cutting-edge technology and paranormal phenomena, the likes of which most people couldn’t even imagine.’

Presto and the assembled villains around the table nodded knowingly.

‘But for what motive?’ countered Darkus. ‘To line your pockets, protect the interests of a chosen few, and fuel your own greed for power?’

‘Bravo, son,’ declared Knightley. ‘Honour may be an old, outdated word, but I’m old and outdated, and I like it.’

‘Think carefully, Doc,’ murmured Carol.

‘And what if I refuse?’ Darkus put it to them.

Carol looked disappointed. ‘You and your father won’t leave this room alive,’ she replied evenly.

Tilly shifted awkwardly, feeling her mother’s caress on
her shoulder – and seeing a compact pistol in her mother’s other hand, trained across the room on her colleagues and friends, the Knightleys.

‘Don’t worry, sweetie,’ Carol soothed her daughter. ‘They’ll make the right decision.’

Tilly stared at Darkus, her eyes unflinching.

Darkus turned to his father for guidance.

‘Well, while the kids are making up their minds, I’ve got a proposal of my own,’ said Knightley and swivelled his bumbag round to the front of his waist.

Darkus looked at him, confused. The Combination members shifted nervously in their seats as Carol retrained the pistol, targeting Knightley specifically.

‘It’s OK, they’re clean,’ she reassured the assembly.

‘It’s just a little something,’ Knightley went on, ‘that’s old and outdated, like me, but it’s constructed out of human bone, and lined with lead, so it wasn’t detected by your scanners.’ He unzipped the bumbag and took out a small, finely carved
box
, with an array of cryptic-looking designs spanning each side of it. ‘It turns out Underwood was quite a collector.’

Darkus recognised it as a
puzzle box
– instantly deducing that this was the same vessel used for Underwood’s hard drive, which Tilly and his father had discovered in the vault on Chancery Lane.

‘In fact,’ Knightley continued, ‘this puzzle box possesses many secrets. Some believe it even offers a portal into other dimensions. Other realities … Well, that’s something you probably know more about than I do.’

‘I’ve got an easier way to transport you to another dimension, Alan. Don’t make me pull this trigger,’ Carol called out.

Knightley carried on, in his own world. ‘I simply used it to smuggle something into this room. Knowing all along that we were walking into a trap, I needed an ace up my sleeve. Something I picked up in the hangar at Area 51.’

Suddenly, a gunshot rang out in the chamber and the shoulder of Knightley’s coat opened up in a red hole, expelling a puff of tweed cloth. Tilly flinched, seeing a whisper of smoke rise from her mother’s pistol.

‘Dad!’ Darkus yelled, grabbing his father as the elder detective fell to his knees.

Knightley grimaced but ignored the wound and arranged the fingers of his left hand in a wide spread around the box, covering the faces of the serpents and winged men that were etched into the design, then used the fingers of his right hand to rotate the petals of the flower engraving.

‘The next shot will be the last,’ Carol warned him.

Knightley set the box on the floor as the device unfolded itself. The lid flipped back and the four sides lowered with the aid of tiny cogs and wheels, opening up to reveal: a small cube of clay-like substance, covered in wires with a detonator positioned on top.

It was a
bomb
.

Darkus instinctively recoiled. Members of the Combination got to their feet in consternation and alarm. Presto choked back a nervous laugh and cleared his throat. Carol’s eyes widened.

‘Is that it, Alan?’ she asked, trying to remain calm.

‘It’s enough to kill everyone in this room,’ he replied, resting his finger on the detonator, arming the device. ‘Now let’s finish the game.’

‘You expect me to believe you’d sacrifice all the innocents in this building?’ Carol challenged him. ‘Even if it means you succeed in destroying the Combination?’

‘Dougal is downstairs with instructions to trip the fire alarm and order a full evacuation if he doesn’t hear from me in …’ Knightley glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Well, right now, as a matter of fact.’

On cue, a fire alarm started bleating steadily throughout the pyramid. Seconds later, the echo of large movements of people reverberated up through the building. The Combination members began hurling threats and accusations, directed at each other as much as anyone else.

Presto and Chloe ran to each other, then checked the emergency exits, only to find them locked. Their eyes turned to their new number one, Carol Palmer, who had clearly ensured that no one would be leaving the room without her permission.

‘OK,’ Carol conceded, raising her voice above the commotion. ‘What do you want, Alan?’

‘Darkus and Tilly, in that lift now.’

‘You really expect me to give you my daughter back?’

Tilly shook her head, her face a veil of torn loyalties.

‘Come home, Tilly,’ Darkus called out. ‘Remember what I told you in the desert,’ he pleaded. ‘
We’re
your family now.
All of us.
’ He nodded.

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.