Knightley and Son (9781619631540) (21 page)

Knightley looked wistful for a second, then regained his composure. “No. It’s a little late for that.”

“Maybe if you just put some thought into it?” urged Darkus.

“I’m told, for a detective, I can be quite oblivious,” said Knightley with a smile that turned down at the edges instead of up. His eyes glittered with moisture for a split second before returning to their steady gaze. Knightley collected himself. “Now, I have work to do,” he said, picking up his copy of
The Code
.

Darkus frowned, hearing those familiar words—“work to do”—and knowing his father would probably never change, regardless of circumstance.

Knightley put his feet up and announced with a mixture of relish and disgust: “I still have twenty pages of this infernal opus to go . . .”

The day began unremarkably for Tilly, in her dormitory bedroom at Cranston School. All the other bunk-desks were empty, as all her peers were spending half-term break with their families, while she was now caged up like a delinquent—which, quite frankly, she wore as a badge of honor.

Wanting to finish the book as soon as possible, she read the final chapter of
The Code
and tossed it aside in disgust. Not only was it morally shallow, it held no secrets whatsoever. Much to her annoyance, it had no effect on her at all.

She walked down to the cafeteria and had breakfast on her own while some of the staff ate together on the opposite side of the room. Pupils and teachers alike treated her with grudging respect, for no one else at Cranston succeeded in flouting the rules as effortlessly as she did. Few pupils dared to get too close to her, for they knew they would score no points with their parents if they invited her over for a meal, or, God forbid, to stay for the weekend. That being said, their fathers did enjoy her father’s TV program, and that might go a little way. But Tilly was unpredictable, in friendship and enmity. Everyone knew it was down to her losing her mother. But that tragic fact had only gone a little way too.

The fact was, Tilly was a wild card—secretly admired by the girls, secretly fancied by the boys, and secretly feared by the teachers who were charged with her supervision.

The housemistress who was her appointed prison warden watched her suspiciously from across the room. Tilly pushed her food from one side of the plate to the other, then drained her cup of coffee and walked out without acknowledging her.

Tilly roamed the wood-paneled corridors past libraries and classrooms, her shoes squeaking on the waxed parquet floors. She hadn’t completed any of her homework assignments, but she usually managed to track down her test results online, and sometimes, for amusement, hacked her way to a higher grade. However, she did feel genuine remorse over Miss Khan’s science project: a tedious affair involving ticker tape and the velocity of a moving object that had been due over two weeks ago. Miss Khan was one of the more sympathetic teachers at Cranston, and Tilly felt obliged to explain herself privately rather than in front of the whole class, where it might be seen as an act of defiance or popular revolution. Miss Khan deserved better than that.

Tilly walked toward the postmodern-looking science department, crossed the atrium, and located Miss Khan’s classroom—where Tilly had observed the teacher spent most of her free time as well. Tilly peered through the window, but nobody was home. The whiteboard was blank, the chairs all arranged. Then she noticed that the door to the lab annex was slightly ajar. She knocked gently, nudging it open.

Miss Khan looked up from a lab table, wearing her customary white coat, square plastic glasses, and a mane of jet-black hair neatly tied back. Her light brown skin was younger than her twenty-nine years. If she let her hair down and adjusted her makeup choices, Tilly was convinced she was capable of being a stone-cold fox, although she doubted Miss Khan would ever submit to such a makeover.

“Oh, hello, Tilly,” she said, removing her glasses and setting down an electric soldering iron.

“Morning, Miss Khan.”

“I hope you’re having a pleasant half-term break,” she inquired gently.

“It’s fine.”

“If you’d like to have a chat, please take a seat. I was just finishing up a pet project of mine.” Miss Khan pushed aside a small device held together with clamps. It looked, at first glance, like an asthma inhaler of some kind.

Tilly focused on the task at hand. “Sorry about the velocity assignment, Miss Khan. It sort of”—she looked for the right words—“got away from me.”

Miss Khan nodded, trying to hide her disappointment. Tilly was one of her most gifted pupils—along with another student, Darkus Knightley. Both were unusual children, to say the least, yet they seemed to share an affinity for science, while being polar opposites in every other way. If Tilly would only apply herself. But the tragedy the poor girl had experienced, losing her mother at such a young age, and left with only that
murkh
of a father . . . Miss Khan silently chastised herself for judging Tilly at all.

“Well, never mind. If you’re here over half-term break perhaps you could work on it now,” she suggested, glancing down at her own project, as if to remind herself that her talents weren’t entirely wasted.

Tilly followed her glance and noticed that one half of the asthma inhaler was open and contained a miniature circuit board of some kind. It was like no inhaler she had ever seen before.

“What
is
that, Miss Khan?”

“Oh, it’s just a little gizmo I’ve been working on,” she said modestly. She picked it up and turned it around in the light, inspecting her handiwork. “It’s a self-defense tool. Very simple, really,” she went on. “Instead of salbutamol or fluticasone propionate, this canister contains pepper spray foam, stored in a highly pressurized state. On contact with an attacker it expands and sticks, blinding the person for up to half an hour. I had to modify the delivery system, of course.”

“To increase its effective range?”

“Exactly right,” she replied. “It is effective to over five yards.”

“Nice.”

“Yes, it is.” Miss Khan nodded humbly, then felt obliged to explain. “My father was an armorer in the British army. I was an only child, so as you can imagine, I spent most of my free time in his workshop . . .” She realized she was, in modern parlance, “oversharing.”

“What else have you got?” asked Tilly.

“Like this?”

“Anything, really.”

“Well, I’ve developed some night-vision goggles that Mr. Burke is using to monitor the playing fields.”

“Ah,” said Tilly, realizing any future escape attempts would be significantly hampered.

“Other than that,” said Miss Khan, thinking to herself, “nothing that’s near completion.”

“Well, keep up the good work,” said Tilly, raising her hand in almost a salute. She quickly lowered it again.

“Thank you, Tilly,” the teacher replied, genuinely touched. They exchanged a smile, both realizing the conversation had gone off-road and taken an unexpected turn. Miss Khan brought them back on track. “I look forward to seeing your velocity assignment, when it’s ready,” she said sincerely. “I have high hopes for you.”

“I’ll get right on to it,” Tilly replied, feeling even guiltier than she had when she walked in. She headed for the door, then turned back. “And by the way—that gadget? Very cool.” She nodded once more and left the room.

The silence of the office was broken as Knightley looked up from
The Code
, exhaled heavily, and slammed it shut.

“I find nothing of substance. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing of any interest at all,” he said, discarding it on his desk. “Perhaps it
is
circumstantial. Or even a coincidence.”

“You always said coincidence is the last refuge of the weak-minded,” Darkus reminded him.

“Indeed I did,” he replied, with a troubled expression. “But I fear we may be approaching that last refuge rapidly. And we have to accept that there may be an alternative theory that covers the facts more accurately than our own.” He sighed and removed his feet from the desk. “Let’s lay out the facts as we know them. We can be certain of the following: Ambrose Chambers was the pseudonym of literary agent Bram Beecham. Presto sought to cover up this fact by stealing the signed first edition from the auction. QED.” Knightley tapped on his desk conclusively. “We know Bram Beecham was responsible for writing
The Code
, but he claims he was transcribing from an older text. That argument is supported by the Order of the New Dawn, who contend that the original text harnessed supernatural powers of some kind. But neither Beecham nor the Order can be considered reliable witnesses.” Knightley rapped his knuckles on the desk impatiently. “Beecham was murdered by his assistant, Chloe, for what reason we cannot be sure, but most likely to stop him from talking. So it’s likely that she and Presto are connected, possibly through the Combination.” Knightley paused. “Our only remaining clue is the name ‘Underwood,’ written in blood. I strongly believe this is a sign of Morton’s involvement, possibly proof of his membership of the Combination. But this last part is conjecture, I’ll admit.”

“Which means we
still
only have one solid lead,” said Darkus, rendering his father quiet for a moment. “The book.”

“Be my guest . . .” He handed it to Darkus, then slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes in meditation.

Darkus opened the cover and, once again, began to read—slowly, so as not to miss anything. The first line began:

He read on . . .

Chapter 18

Between the Lines

Darkus continued reading, looking and listening for any clue.

Darkus felt his brain was being bombarded—not by positive messages but by negative ones. Still he read on.