Knightley and Son (9781619631540) (19 page)

Knightley closed his eyes, hoping to sleep but knowing he wouldn’t manage a wink. He had already slept enough for a lifetime.

Chapter 15

Unforeseen Circumstances

Clive rolled over in bed, having a bad dream. In his nightmare, Knightley had stolen his car again and was driving it through a Norwegian fjord. Clive was swimming after it in vain, only to find he had left all his clothing behind on shore.

Clive let out a whimper and sat bolt upright, realizing where he was. Jackie was fast asleep beside him. Tilly was safely locked away at Cranston School under the supervision of her housemistress, just as he had threatened.

He crept out of bed in his pajamas and went to the window to check that the Jag was still in the driveway, which it was. He then padded into the bathroom and squinted as he switched on the light. He looked in the mirror and his face was bleary and tired. He released a heavy sigh and angled the mirrored cabinet door to observe his graying thatch of hair.

Clive had been having an increasing number of bad hair days, and even the Jag didn’t seem to get him noticed lately. But hopefully all that was about to change, thanks to something he’d overheard his colleagues and copresenters talking about—something that had changed their lives; something that would help him build a new improved Clive, Clive 2.0, the Clive GT, more successful in every way. He took his e-book reader from the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet and turned it on. The title page flashed up on the screen, along with a striking symbol:
The Code
. Clive examined it, giddy with pleasure at his little secret.

He sat on the toilet seat and began to read.

When it came to babysitting Bram Beecham (or Ambrose Chambers, depending on how you wanted to look at it), Uncle Bill decided to take no chances. He rested his prodigious weight on an office chair in a corridor directly outside the row of holding cells at Marylebone Police Station, one of the more high-tech stations in London.

The cells currently contained two vocal drunks, a sleeping vagrant, a sullen youth being held on assault charges, and one bestselling author who was now the prime suspect in a far-reaching criminal investigation. Aside from an occasional yell or belch—the latter of which admittedly came from Bill himself sometimes—the corridor was mostly quiet.

Behind a specially reinforced window, Beecham sat quietly on his bunk as if engaged in some form of meditation. For his own safety he had been deprived of his belt, his shoelaces, and anything else that could have posed a threat to himself or others.

Bill took it upon himself to rise from his seat and amble down the length of the corridor to check on Beecham once every fifteen minutes. He completed the circuit by rewarding himself with a treat or two from a rapidly diminishing packet of chocolate digestives positioned on a nearby desk. It was during the ninth or tenth repetition of this routine—Bill didn’t remember which, but he vaguely remembered thinking that he would soon require another packet of digestives—that a figure dressed in black appeared at the end of the corridor.

Having achieved access to the inner sanctum of the police station with a set of carefully forged documents and the assistance of several intercepted phone calls—which the duty officer believed were from his superiors at Scotland Yard—the figure now calmly approached the row of cells. Of course that age-old weapon, charm, had a lot to do with making the operation a success. And charm was something that the figure had to burn, so to speak.

Hearing footsteps, Uncle Bill turned away from the biscuits, recognizing the unexpected visitor.

“Chloy?” he said, butchering her name.

“Why, yes,” answered Chloe, flashing him a smile, still dressed in business attire but looking, according to witnesses, in their defense, like a runway model.

“We-e-ell,” Bill stuttered, overwhelmed by more questions than his brain could efficiently handle all at once. Why was she here? How did she get in? Would a girl like her ever look at an old runkle like him? Bill’s brain momentarily short-circuited. “What can I do ye for?” he managed.

“I’m here to see Mr. Beecham,” she replied calmly.

Bill began to wrestle back control of his senses. “I’m afraid that’s completely impossible,” he said apologetically.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” she said, and took something resembling a lipstick tube from her handbag, then pointed it directly at his face.

“Ho ye!” exclaimed Bill, and moved with surprising speed to block whatever it was—but he was too late.

A pressurized burst of nerve gas exploded out of the end of the lipstick into Bill’s face. Chloe quickly reacted by pulling a gas mask from her handbag and fastening it over her face.

“Aye yer maw!” Bill shouted out, clawing at his stinging eyes while the other elements in the gas were working to relieve him of consciousness. He stumbled backward, pirouetted down the corridor past the cells, then, as if controlled by an invisible tractor beam, collided directly with the desk, lost control of his legs, and fell, headbutting the rest of the chocolate digestives and the tabletop on the way down. He was already unconscious before he hit the ground with a thud that detainees later described as resembling a king-size mattress dropped from a great height.

As the detainees fell asleep in their bunks one by one, Chloe approached the inert mound of Uncle Bill, knelt down, and systematically checked his pockets. Not relishing the job, she quickly located a digital key card in his rear trouser pocket. She then took a large stride over him, stepping out of the threat radius, and continued on toward Beecham’s cell, removing her gas mask.

Fully woken from his meditation, Beecham already had his face pressed against the glass to investigate the commotion.

“Chloe?” he said with a start as her face appeared at the window.

She swiped the key card and opened the cell door. Bram quickly retrieved his jacket from the bunk.

“Thank God you’re here,” he said. “Does this mean I’m being released?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” she replied, and pulled something else out of her handbag. The object flicked open, casting a sharp reflection across his face.

“Wait. . . What?” Beecham looked down at it, confused.

“You made a mistake, Bram. They don’t tolerate mistakes.”

“Who?”

“You
know
who.”

“You’re one of
them
. . .” Beecham backed off, a look of pure horror in his eyes.

Chloe paused a moment, then went after him.

Darkus stirred from an unusually deep sleep to find his father shaking him by the shoulders.

“Wake up, Doc.”

“Wh-what’s wrong?” Darkus leaned up.

“Uncle Bill’s had an accident.”

“What kind of accident?”

“He’s in one piece, just about. But Beecham—well, Beecham’s
dead
.”

Darkus raised himself from the chaise longue. “Incontrovertibly?”

“Categorically.”

Knightley drove with the glass divider open so they could advance theories en route. Clearly Beecham wasn’t working alone, and whoever had created the character of Ambrose Chambers obviously wasn’t happy with the way Beecham had played it. This was evidenced by the theft of the signed copy of
The Code
and confirmed by its author’s untimely demise. Beecham had not only used his Chambers alias to transcribe the contents of the book but also to raise money as a tribute to his daughter’s memory. His good intentions had indeed gotten the better of him. When he signed the first edition for the auction, he also signed his own death warrant. Whoever was holding Beecham’s puppet strings had not counted on the basic family loyalty that resides in even the most amoral of criminal hearts. Beecham had paid the ultimate price, and perhaps he’d always known he would, in order to spend the rest of eternity in the company of his daughter—if his soul was fortunate enough to find the same resting place.

Privately, it didn’t escape Darkus’s thought process that the stranger who had threatened him at the auction might be responsible for Beecham’s death; and sooner or later Darkus would have to inform his father of the threat, and face the consequences—if only to avoid them risking a similar fate.

The sun began to rise over the city, cauterizing the skyline and turning the fog blood-red. Knightley drove past King’s Cross station, using the taxi lane to bypass commuter traffic, and they soon found themselves outside the towering glass structure of University College Hospital.

A Scotland Yard liaison led them through the green tinted foyer and into an elevator to the thirteenth floor. The corridors were blue and deceptively cheery. The liaison took them to a large private room, where Uncle Bill was holding court surrounded by a bevy of young nurses taking notes and feeding him sips of water—which was essential, as Bill was entombed in a body cast and attached to several cables that suspended his right arm and left leg in full traction.

“Had a bit of a spill,” he wheezed with a weak smile. “Beecham’s assistant Chloy caught me by surprise.”

“So I see,” said Knightley, shaking his head.

“Aye,” said Bill sheepishly. “I might be laid up for a while.” His voice trailed off as a nurse attended to him.

“Evidently,” said Knightley.

“Where is Beecham now?” inquired Darkus.

Bill gestured down with his eyes. “In the basement down there. I wanted to keep him close.”

“You don’t think he’s planning to get up and walk away?” said Knightley.

“At this point, I don’t know what to believe, Alan. But I do know it’s up to ye two to find out.” Bill let out a long sigh.

A nurse interjected, “He needs his rest.”

“And some digestives, Alan,” he piped up, before sinking back exhausted. “Chocolate ones.”

“We’ll make sure you get everything you need,” said Knightley.

“Get well soon, Uncle Bill,” added Darkus, as they respectfully exited the room.

The elevator moved at the creeping pace of a funeral march, carrying Darkus and his father deep into the bowels of the hospital. They finally stepped out into a basement and followed signs to the morgue.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Knightley asked.

“I’d like to see him with my own eyes. To be sure.”

The pathologist was standing in the corridor, assembling his tools on a trolley.

“Mr. Knightley?” he asked, then saw Darkus and looked disapproving.

“It’s okay,” Knightley assured him, and patted his son on the shoulder, then quietly informed the pathologist: “He just wants to say good-bye.”

The man frowned and continued arranging his forceps, chisels, and saws.

Bram Beecham was waiting for them in a refrigerated room, laid out on a steel bench and concealed by a black body bag.

Darkus took a pair of latex gloves from a dispenser, snapped them on, and slowly unzipped the body bag to reveal the gaping wound in Beecham’s torso. Knightley examined it from the other side of the counter.

“Knife trauma,” whispered Darkus.

“I concur,” said Knightley. “Probably a stiletto blade. Something that could be easily concealed. Major arteries severed. She knew what she was doing.”

Darkus noticed the index finger on Beecham’s right hand: it was daubed in dried blood, while Beecham’s other fingers were uniformly clean. Darkus quickly deduced an explanation: “I think Chambers might have left one last message for us.”

Chapter 16

An Old Friend

The Knightleys arrived at Marylebone Police Station fifteen minutes later, hoping to process the murder scene before it could be contaminated. Darkus was getting used to the perplexed and disapproving stares he received when dealing with adults, especially police officers, but he didn’t let it break his concentration. The catastrophizer was gyrating and thrumming too insistently for anything to distract him.

On Bill’s orders—which were triple-verified this time, to avoid a further breach—the duty officer led the Knightleys to the cell where the murder had been committed. The rest of the detainees had been moved to alternate accommodation, still drowsy from the nerve agent.

Darkus examined the floor, noting the sharp imprint of Chloe’s stiletto heels in the linoleum, but finding less blood on the floor than he expected. He deduced that Beecham had fallen backward onto the bunk during the attack, resulting in the white shape his body had left on the bedding, which was otherwise soaked in red. If there was a message, it had to be within arm’s reach of the bunk where Beecham had expired. Darkus knelt down to get a better look, and sure enough, on the underside of the mattress of the upper bunk, two words were written in blood: