3 of a Kind
Authors: Rohan Gavin
For my mum & dad, who inspired this series
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-backed 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.’
