K-9 (5 page)

Jackie drove through the tall, metal gates of the compound and saw a well-built fifty-year-old man in grey combat fatigues, waiting for them in the car park. He had the gait of a military officer and clipped, receding hair, which framed a chiselled but kind face with soft blue eyes. From the back seat, Wilbur looked up and wagged his tail once, recognising the figure.

Jackie stepped out of the car while Darkus opened the boot for Wilbur. A few distant barks signalled the presence of the other residents of the rescue centre, which consisted of a nondescript concrete block overlooking a large, fenced recreation yard.

‘Captain Reed?’ Jackie enquired.

‘Call me John.’ The man extended his hand. ‘Hello, Wilburforce.’

Darkus felt a tug as Wilbur trotted towards his former master and sat obediently by his side.

‘I’m really sorry,’ Jackie began. ‘We just can’t keep him any more.’

Darkus said nothing, keeping his hands in the pockets of his herringbone coat, unwilling to make eye contact.

‘It doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure you did your best,’ Reed said diplomatically. ‘All of you,’ he added, directed at Darkus. Reed ruffled the German shepherd’s fur. ‘Wilbur’s a “war dog”. He’s seen things most people could never hope to recover from. These dogs, they saved a great many lives – including my own.’ Reed stroked the dark patch between Wilbur’s ears, losing himself in recollection for a moment. ‘In my experience, people let you down. But dogs, they never do.’ He looked up, gesturing to the rescue centre. ‘This is my way of paying them back.’

‘Can I visit him?’ Darkus asked, fiddling with his hat.

‘It’s not up to me,’ Reed replied.

Darkus looked down again.

‘You’ll have to talk to
her
 . . .’ Reed pointed off towards a classic London black cab parked in a corner at the end of the yard. The driver’s door opened and Bogna stepped out in a pair of wrap-around sunglasses, waving cheerfully as she came to greet them.

Darkus broke into a broad smile and turned to his mum. ‘You mean . . . ?’

Jackie nodded. ‘Wilbur’s going to live with Bogna and your dad. You can visit him whenever you like . . . I told you to have a little faith sometimes.’

Darkus spontaneously gave his mum a hug, then knelt down and grabbed Wilbur in an embrace. Wilbur raised his snout proudly, then sniffed at Bogna’s brightly coloured housecoat, smelling a variety of strange and powerful odours.

‘Hello, Wilburs. You come to live with Bogna now, yes?’

Wilbur wagged once in response.

‘Where’s Dad?’ Darkus asked her.

Bogna shook her head uncertainly. ‘I haven’t seen much of him in a fort’s night.’

‘Can I go with them?’ Darkus asked his mum.

‘If you want,’ she said, feeling that same tug herself. ‘Just be careful, and be home tomorrow night in time for school.’

‘OK, Mum.’ Darkus attached the lead to Wilbur’s collar and walked him towards his father’s black cab without a second glance. Bogna hurried to keep up.

Wilbur stopped, and looked back at Reed for a moment. The captain called out: ‘I’m here if you need me. That goes for both of you.’

Wilbur twitched his ears. Darkus looked back and nodded, then stepped into the back of the cab with the dog, and within a few moments they had accelerated out of the gate, indicating right, but turning left, and vanishing from view.

Jackie winced as she watched them go, then turned to Reed. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’ll take a lot to split those two up,’ he replied with a brief nod – almost a salute. A chorus of light yelps from the main building punctuated the moment. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, Mrs Palmer, it’s nearly time for their walk.’

‘Of course.’ Jackie returned to her car alone and headed home.

As Bogna swerved and jolted them towards London, Darkus felt like he was introducing Wilbur to a new part of his life – one that had lain dormant for too long. Once Wilbur was fed and settled into his new digs, Darkus intended to track down his father, wherever he might be. His aim was to find out what case he was pursuing – for he was in no doubt his dad was on a case – and to figure out how it related to their injured colleague, Uncle Bill. If Knightley Senior hadn’t been seen regularly for two weeks, then two things were abundantly clear: firstly, the case was consuming his every waking minute; and secondly – due to the fact that the first forty-eight hours (the most important in any investigation) had elapsed – the case was clearly
not
going to plan. Whatever trail his dad was following was likely to be cold, and perhaps Darkus could help to warm it up.

Bogna guided the Fairway black cab through the warren of north London streets with surprising ease, and before long they were entering the borough of Islington and turning the corner into Cherwell Place.

The short, terraced street with the almost imperceptible curve still looked as if it was being observed through a magnifying glass – just as Darkus remembered it. Bogna pulled into the narrow garage in the alley nearby. Then Darkus led Wilbur toward number 27 while Bogna yanked down the garage door and locked it.

As Bogna let them into the house, Darkus already sensed that his father was absent. The frenetic energy of his presence was lacking, and the place felt lonely despite being immaculately well kept.

‘OK, Mister Troubles, you’re coming with me,’ Bogna instructed Wilbur, who obediently followed her into the kitchen. ‘I hope you like goulash,’ she added.

Satisfied that Wilbur was in good hands, Darkus climbed the stairs to the top floor and crossed the short landing to the heavy oak door with the engraving:
Alan Knightley, BA, MA, Private Investigator
. Darkus slowly turned the handle and entered his father’s office. The wood-panelled room was exactly as he remembered it, the shelves weighed down with books, the broad, mahogany desk sitting at the front window with the globe and the slightly dated computer facing the leather office chair.

Darkus approached the desk and ran his hand over the empty chair back, imagining his father in it and divining what he might be working on. The desk was covered in scraps of paper and receipts – mostly for Pizza Express. Not wishing to pry, Darkus surveyed the debris from a distance rather than sorting through it or ‘processing the scene’ – which would have been too much of a breach of privacy, even though the subject in question was his father. However, in clear sight among the clutter were several train tickets, each with the same words printed on them:
Hampstead Heath
. It was a sprawling urban wilderness located in north London, popular with romantic couples, ramblers and tourists; but what his father wanted with it was a mystery.

Finding nothing more of note, Darkus heeded the call of nature and crossed the landing to the bathroom. He closed the door behind him, then approached the toilet, only to see a book left open on a small table within arm’s length of the seat. The book looked to be at least fifty years old, and was tattered and torn, its spine broken and bent. The page it was left open at displayed a large, ink-drawn illustration of a gigantic dog of some kind, its fangs bared, its tail arched and its claws raised in attack. Most noticeable though were its eyes: monstrous, glittering eyes that were the very personification of evil. Darkus visibly recoiled from the image, folded the corner of the page to mark it, then slammed the book closed. It was then that he saw the front cover, and the title, in ancient, Gothic script:

Chapter 4

His Father’s Footsteps

Darkus arrived at Hampstead Heath overground train station just after noon and climbed the steps to the exit. He took several minutes to get his bearings, imagining himself to be his father, and seeing the world the way he would have done.

Darkus noted a modest fruit stall, a zebra crossing, several mums pushing prams, a row of shops and a nearby supermarket. To his right was the entrance to Hampstead Heath itself. The huge, ancient park was located on a high ridge overlooking central London. The only guide was a small welcome map displaying an extensive jigsaw of shapes and paths. The eight-hundred-acre wilderness featured dense woodland, numerous parks and meadows, several ponds and a palatial estate called Kenwood House – not to mention the legions of devoted Londoners, joggers, hikers and dog walkers who protected their rural oasis with pride.

According to his research, ‘The Heath’, as it had become known, dated back well over a thousand years to the reign of King Ethelred the Unready, and was the property of various monarchs and their cronies, before being handed back to the general public in the mid-twentieth century. Beneath the trees, grass and mud lay a band of London clay, a network of underground watercourses and a host of scuttling, burrowing and foraging creatures who also called it home.

Darkus observed his surroundings again and felt his catastrophiser begin to warm up. Much of the time this mental device was a curse that made everything around him part of a dastardly plot, which, admittedly, was often pure fantasy. Until recently that was, when the plots had become reality. For when the catastrophiser was correct – and it was with increasing regularity – it gave Darkus an almost clairvoyant ability to read the signs that were dotted around him. Signs that almost everyone else in the world was blissfully unaware of.

As he glanced past the fruit stall, he remembered his father’s particular fondness for satsuma oranges – and his unusual habit of skinning the orange with one small, vertical incision while leaving the rest of the orange peel completely intact. Darkus deduced that one or two of these small oranges would have been too few for a walk like this; four would have been sufficient; but six was a satisfying round number that rolled off the tongue as ‘half a dozen’. Therefore, Darkus concluded that his father would almost certainly have bought half a dozen of these small oranges from the fruit stall before embarking any further. This was pure speculation of course. Imagination, even. But imagination was the basis of detective work, until the facts arrived to support it.

Darkus gave a brief description of his father to the fruit seller, who told him he couldn’t possibly remember every customer – despite the fact that this particular customer would have been wearing a distinctive Donegal tweed ensemble. Darkus accepted the seller’s answer, bought half a dozen oranges and divided them among the pockets of his herringbone coat, then walked up the gentle incline and through the gates on to Hampstead Heath.

He followed a tree-lined path towards the first expanse of grass, which overlooked two ponds, speckled with ducks and the occasional swan. He passed a wooden bench, which had an engraving calligraphed on it:

Other memorial benches were positioned at scenic viewpoints throughout the park.

Darkus observed a few couples strolling along, a handful of avid joggers, some dogs leading their owners, but nothing more intriguing than that. He walked further, his mind wandering the multitude of footpaths to guess which one his father might have taken. To anyone else, it would have appeared an impossible task. But to Darkus it was a soup of possibilities.

Then he saw the first sign.

A laminated photograph was attached to the pillar of a small fence. It showed a medium-sized dog with shaggy, light brown hair. Darkus identified it as a Labrador-poodle mix: a Labradoodle as they had become known. This one had what breeders called a cappuccino coat. Its curly hair had been shorn to resemble an unusually soft-hearted lion. Hampstead Heath was evidently its Kalahari. Below the picture was a faded word written in large letters: