3 of a Kind (3 page)

Climber Two started down after his friend, but set off a minor avalanche of slate tiles that rattled down the incline and flew over the edge in quick succession, shattering loudly on the ground. Climber Two grabbed on to a chimney stack for dear life, while Climber One tripped over the loose slates, appearing to tap-dance, before cartwheeling down the remainder of the roof and dropping into the abyss.

Until a hand shot out and grabbed his arm.

‘
Dorkus!
What’re you doing?’ The climber stared up in shock.

‘Saving you. And it’s
Darkus
…’

The climber slipped again and screamed until Darkus gripped the boy’s wrist and wedged himself against the corner of the metal balcony – using his father’s preferred martial art, Wing Chun, to plant his feet instead of following the ill-fated mountaineer over the edge. But the force of gravity was too strong. The climber clawed on to Darkus’s arm. The sole of Darkus’s Dunlop Green Flash trainer slipped on the wooden decking and he lost his balance, toppling over the railing.

‘No – !’ the climber shouted as he saw his earnest classmate following him into space …

Until another pair of hands shot out and grabbed Darkus around the waist. Darkus maintained his grip
on the climber and craned his neck, seeing the embarrassing dad from the dance floor, hyperventilating and heaving both boys back over the railing. Darkus held on tight as the three of them tumbled back on to the safety of the balcony.

The revellers gasped, catching their breath.

‘I assume your mother knows you’re here,’ the rescuer announced.

Darkus knew that voice. He did a double take and looked up to see his father standing over him, partially obscured by the fake beard and glasses.

‘Dad – ?’ Darkus exclaimed, eyes wide. ‘I can’t believe …’ his voice turned to an accusatory whisper, ‘you’d
embarrass
me like this.’

‘Would you rather I let you fall?’ Knightley protested. ‘The chances of survival were approximately thirty to one. At best.’

Darkus shook his head, and got to his feet. ‘Not here, Dad. Please.’ He walked from the balcony into the house.

Knightley followed his son around the minstrels’ gallery with the partygoers gyrating below as if nothing had happened. ‘I know you don’t want to see me … But I need to see
you
, Doc. It’s important.’

He spun. ‘It’s
Darkus
.’

Knightley recoiled, then straightened up, looking
hurt. ‘As you wish.’ He trailed Darkus down the glass staircase, through the entrance hall and out of the front door.

Knightley caught up with him on the grass, until Darkus turned to block him.

‘How did you find me?’

‘Tilly did a sweep of social media. “Jason’s summer pool party”, I believe,’ said Knightley using finger quotes, then winced as he peeled the fake beard from his face. ‘You’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time online lately,’ he said disapprovingly.

‘You mean, like every other kid my age?’

‘I would question the assumption that you’re anything like other children in any way, Darkus.’ Knightley glanced at the revellers falling about around them.

‘Well, at least I’m trying …’

Knightley looked truly puzzled by this, as if the prospect of ‘normal’ was something to be avoided at all costs. ‘I suppose that would explain the outfit,’ he deduced, casting a disparaging eye over Darkus’s casual clothes and shoes, before returning to business. ‘The reason I’m here is I have a message for you … From Tilly.’

‘Since when have you become her errand boy?’

‘Well …’ Knightley mumbled, ‘well, we’ve sort of
been working together as a matter of fact,’ he confessed and shrugged apologetically.

Darkus’s jaw dropped. ‘You mean, like –’ this time he was the one using finger quotes – ‘“Knightley and … surrogate daughter?”’

His father shrugged again. ‘Something like an apprentice, you might say.’

Darkus’s face ran a gamut of emotions from disbelief, through amazement, to bewilderment – coming to rest on betrayal.

‘She’s unpredictable,’ warned Darkus. ‘A wild card. You said it yourself.’

‘Since you took your sabbatical, she’s the only card I’ve got.’ Knightley paused, looking for any hint of forgiveness. ‘Before you shoot the messenger, don’t you want to hear what the message is?’

Darkus turned away and walked towards the road.

‘We’ve apprehended Morton Underwood,’ his father called after him.

Darkus stopped in his tracks, glancing around to make sure no one else had heard – but the party continued its noisy progress.

‘The trouble is he’s put himself into a post-hypnotic trance,’ Knightley went on.

Darkus turned to face his dad, realising the gravity of the situation.

‘We have no idea how long this “episode” might last,’ Knightley added. ‘It’s a coma-like state, much the same as what he did to me. It could be years.’

‘Did he say anything before he entered this state?’ demanded Darkus.

‘He invited us to play a game. He said he had infor-mation about Tilly’s mother’s death. About
Carol
.’ Knightley’s eyes winced with painful recollection for a moment, before returning to their steely gaze.

‘What kind of information?’ said Darkus, his brow furrowing with concern.

‘He recited a code of some kind.’ Knightley unfolded a piece of paper containing a set of words and numbers, then read from it: ‘Fifty-three, sixty-four, chance, a relay, thirteen-thirty-nine.’

‘That’s exactly what he said?’ asked Darkus. ‘I mean
precisely
?’

His father nodded.

Darkus closed his eyes and let the words and numbers whirl around his mind, like balls on a roulette wheel, waiting to see where they’d land. Knightley knew from experience not to disturb his son during this process. Instead he watched with a mixture of awe and the faintest hint of professional jealousy.

‘Be so kind as to repeat the sequence again,’ said Darkus with his eyes still closed.

Knightley read the code the way a bingo caller announces the lucky numbers. ‘Fifty-three, sixty-four, chance … a relay … thirteen-thirty-nine.’

Darkus remained silent, examining the vortex of possibilities in his head. Then he began to speak quietly: ‘Once you stop trying to make sense of it, and just listen to the
sounds
themselves, a familiar pattern presents itself.’

Knightley raised his eyebrows. ‘It does?’ he said, surprised.

‘Yes,’ answered his son. ‘Underwood has a speech impediment that appears to have garbled what would otherwise be a perfectly comprehensible message – either spoken deliberately, or by accident, before he lost consciouness.’

‘You mean like a slip-up of the mind. A “brain fart” I believe it’s known as,’ Knightley speculated, before censuring himself: ‘Sorry, do proceed. How did you arrive at this deduction?’

‘Simple,’ said Darkus. ‘Why else would Underwood give us the location of a safe deposit box in Central London?’

‘A safe deposit box? How could you possibly know that?’

‘It’s not “chance, a relay”. It’s “Chancery Lane”. The Chancery Lane Safe Deposit Company is the oldest and
most trusted in London. The address is fifty-three to sixty-four Chancery Lane. Therefore we can assume that the number of the safe deposit box is identified by the remaining digits in the sequence: one-three-three-nine.’

‘Outstanding,’ said Knightley, shaking his head in admiration. ‘You’ve still got it, Doc.’ He guided his son towards their trusty, souped-up London black cab that was parked in the shadows.

‘But you’re still not getting it, Dad.’ Darkus resisted his father’s guidance. ‘Consider this solution a farewell gift.’

‘A farewell? From what?’

‘From the business. I’m not coming back to work, Dad. I’ve got GCSEs next year. And a lot of catching up to do … in all kinds of ways.’

‘I’m afraid it’s my turn to be rational. Tilly’s told me about you and Alexis, and her slightly … left-of-centre ideas.’

Darkus waited to see where this was going.

‘I know this is about Wilbur,’ said his father gently. ‘I know how much it hurt you, but I never could have predicted that outcome –’

‘I don’t want to talk about that right now.’

‘I loved that mutt as much as you did.’

‘Did you?’ Darkus challenged him, feeling his chest tighten with emotion.

‘I never wanted this line of work for you, Doc. But we both have to accept that detective work’s in your blood. There’s no escaping it.’

Darkus took a deep breath, then answered, ‘Congratulations on apprehending Underwood. I’m certain you’ll crack the Combination soon enough. Goodnight, Dad.’

Darkus started walking away, feeling a childish sense of victory, tempered with an unsettling, nauseous feeling in his stomach.

‘The Combination is a revolving door, you know that,’ his father implored. ‘One leader falls, another takes their place. Until we get them all in one place, crack the mechanism and take it apart, they’ll always be out there. They’ll never stop …’

‘I hope you and Tilly find what you’re looking for,’ Darkus responded, before turning away.

Knightley’s arms dropped to his sides and he stood on the pavement, hopeless, as his son passed by the familiar shape of the London black cab and walked off into the night.

Tilly marched briskly past the row of office buildings, whose windows reflected the first rays of sunrise – which were not dissimilar to the orange tips of her hair, the remainder of which was currently dyed electric blue. Knightley struggled to keep up with her and Uncle Bill’s orthopaedic loafers waddled from under his coat-tails. Two plain clothes SO42 agents followed at a distance, their eyes flicking left and right to evaluate their surroundings.

Tilly reached the imposing building, which occupied an entire block of Chancery Lane and was accessed by one reinforced door with a large surveillance camera angled over it. They were met by the tight-lipped manager of the depository, who looked them over quizzically.

‘Allow mae,’ explained Uncle Bill, offering up his creased leather ID wallet.

‘Specialist Operations branch 42 …?’ the manager read aloud. ‘Never heard of it … until I got a call at 4 a.m. this morning.’

‘Well, let’s just hope ye don’t have tae hear from us again,’ said Bill and barged past him into the foyer, where the two SO42 agents took up position.

Tilly and Knightley followed in Bill’s wake, passing a pair of uniformed security guards. The manager scuttled along behind them.

Moments later the whole ensemble descended in a narrow lift, which opened out on to a secure basement guarded by a giant vault door. It was forged out of layers of laminated steel, welded together with rivets the size of dinner plates. The manager rose on tiptoe and typed a long sequence of numbers into a keypad, then a series of complex locking mechanisms rotated, gears engaged, pins retracted and bars slid apart, causing the door to gradually swing open on a set of unfathomably thick hinges.

Tilly, Bill and Knightley stepped through the huge doorway into a long corridor, lined with compact-sized, individual steel boxes. Tilly walked straight to the box marked
1339
and tapped on it with a black-painted fingernail.

The manager made a show of reaching into his jacket for the master keys.

‘Of course, this is highly irregular …’ he protested.

‘I’m tipped to get an A-star in Chemistry. Open it, or I’ll blow the bloody door off,’ she warned.

Knightley and Bill exchanged a concerned glance.

The manager flushed and inserted one key into each of the two locks, then turned them together. A click accompanied the door nudging ajar.

Tilly reached over and tore it open to reveal …

A rectangular drawer with a metal lid. She lifted the lid and groped around in the dark, vacuuous space, until her fingers found something sitting at the back: it was approximately the same size as a hardback book, but it was slim, smooth and cold. She pulled it out.

It was a finely carved ivory
box
, with an array of cryptic-looking geometric designs spanning every side of it. On closer inspection, there appeared to be characters lurking behind the maze of etched lines: a winged figure; a serpent; and a man with a forked tail. Tilly fumbled with the box, trying to locate the lid, but it wouldn’t budge. She then shook it violently and raised her hands, preparing to shatter it on the steel edge of the deposit drawer.

‘Wait – !’ Knightley shouted, causing everyone to start. ‘It’s not a toy.’ He prised it out of Tilly’s determined grasp.

‘Aye,’ agreed Uncle Bill – although he had no idea why. ‘Erm, what is it then?’

‘It’s a “
puzzle box
”,’ answered Knightley.

‘So it
is
a toy –’ Tilly demanded, reaching to grab it back.

‘Ah-ah,’ insisted Knightley. ‘If you break it you risk destroying what’s inside. They’re known to be booby-trapped.’

‘So let’s X-ray it,’ Tilly countered.

Knightley shook his head. ‘It’s lined with lead. This is no ordinary box,’ he whispered in awe. He turned it over in his hands, analysing the markings. ‘Puzzle boxes are based on designs from the Mayans and the earliest African tribes. But this one appears to be Parisian in origin, mid-eighteenth century, one of only a dozen if my hunch is correct. It is made up of hundreds, if not thousands, of moving parts. You might guess it’s made of ivory. In fact, it’s made of bone. Some say … human bone.’

‘OK, that is creepy,’ admitted Tilly.

‘Aye,’ concurred Bill.

The manager watched in baffled silence.

Knightley went on: ‘Puzzle boxes were used to keep safe the darkest secrets. Conspiracy, blackmail, murder. It was even rumoured that they offered a portal into other dimensions. Other realities …’

‘You mean like wormholes?’ asked Tilly, unconvinced. ‘OK, now you’re getting a little carried away,’ she goaded.

‘Am I?’ Knightley challenged her, his ears lifting and brow lowering. ‘There are phenomena in this world that defy science, that defy logic. I’ve known this for some time, even though the rest of you think I’ve lost the plot.’ He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘Well, I may not know everything, but I do know something about this box.’ He held it firmly in both hands. ‘Now, do you want to know what’s inside or not?’