Authors: Rohan Gavin
‘That’s where we’ll be staying,’ said Darkus decisively.
The pyramid shape scribbled on the notepad in Survival Town was too specific to be an accident. And finding one in Las Vegas was too lucky to be chance. And besides, Darkus had learned from his father: never succumb to the luxury of coincidence. Tilly looked at him and nodded her agreement.
The minicab pulled into the forecourt of the Egyptian and two bellboys in pharaoh headdresses, robes and sandals jogged over to open the doors. The Billochs were helped out of their seats, followed by Darkus and Tilly. Upon opening the boot, the bellboys paused, finding an unconscious Knightley Senior among the bags.
‘Dinnae worry, we’ll take that one,’ Bill told them, taking hold of Knightley’s upper body, before dropping him again as a passing hawker flicked a flyer and handed it to him.
‘What’s that?’ asked Darkus.
‘Nae idea, Doc, but it could be vital evidence.’ Bill tucked the flyer in an inside pocket and returned to lugging Knightley.
Darkus gave the cabbie a tip, then accompanied Tilly through the grand entrance, underneath a towering sphinx, carved out of stone, with an animal’s body and a human head staring mysteriously into the night sky. The pair proceeded through a set of dramatic columns into a vast atrium with an open-plan lobby in the centre of the pyramid. The walls extended upwards at inverted angles, each storey containing rows of rooms, like cubicles in a giant, triangular beehive. Wide escalators took tourists gliding up from the ground floor to the shopping mall and food court. It took several seconds for Darkus to get his bearings, before approaching the reception desk, which appeared to be over fifty metres long, with some twenty-five receptionists all taking bookings. Darkus went to the first one available and introduced himself.
‘The name’s Knightley. We don’t have a reservation, but my father is currently suffering a narcoleptic episode and we’re in need of a room for the night.’
‘A narco-what?’ enquired the receptionist, tilting her head.
Darkus glanced across the foyer to the Billoch brothers who were struggling with Knightley’s body, their cowboy boots skittering on the marble floor.
‘Make that two rooms,’ Darkus added, then turned back to the receptionist and channelled his father’s wit and charm. ‘You see, Dad was on assignment with POTUS … That stands for the President of the United States,’ he confided.
‘Oh my …’ warbled the receptionist.
Moments later, Darkus tapped Tilly on the shoulder and directed her to the lifts, which ran up the inside of the walls at a precipitous angle.
‘So they had a room?’ she asked.
‘Only the Presidential Suite,’ explained Darkus, motioning to a convoy of bellboys in his wake.
She held up her hand to high-five him, then they fist-bumped and led the convoy into a glass elevator.
‘Hold on.’ Darkus hesitated – the wheels of his investigative mind turning. ‘Tilly, you get everyone settled. I have a few preliminary enquiries to carry out.’
‘Need help?’ she offered.
He shook his head and stepped back into the lobby. ‘Keep an eye on Dad, and keep your phone on.’
‘Duh,’ she responded, glancing at the ever-present timer on her home screen.
Uncle Bill nodded, impressed. ‘Aye, he’s a chip off the old block, that Doc,’ the Scotsman panted as he and his brother carried Knightley into the lift lengthways. ‘Watch ’is feet, Dougal!’ he snapped as the doors
closed and the glass pod began rising up the pyramid wall at a thirty-nine-degree angle. ‘Oh, mah tottie scones,’ Bill exclaimed as the ground fell away.
Darkus watched his friends rise into the heavens, then returned to the long check-in desk and approached the receptionist again.
‘Master Knightley, how can I be of excellent service?’ the receptionist asked.
‘Well, we’re meant to be meeting a friend here. Her name is Bogna Rejesz.’ He spelled the name out carefully. ‘Do you have a booking under that name?’
Darkus knew it was a long shot, but sometimes long shots were all a detective had – and this city was built on gambles.
‘Well, we wouldn’t normally give out that kind of information,’ said the receptionist, ‘but seeing as your dad’s working with the President and all …’ she whispered, typing a command into her keyboard. She pursed her rouged lips and shook her head. ‘I apologise, but there’s nobody here by that name.’
Darkus nodded: he thought as much. He paused a moment, sifting through the other possibilities. ‘How about
Clorr Entertainment
?’ Darkus spelled out the
company name clearly. ‘Anything under that name?’
The receptionist obliged by keying in another command, then she made a glum face. ‘Sorry, honey, we don’t have any reservations under that name either.’ She rested her fingers on the keyboard and glanced at the screen, before brightening. ‘Oh, wait. We do have a Miss Pam Clorr staying with us. Might that help?’
Darkus cocked his head, taking in the name. ‘Pam Clorr … yes, that might help. Would you be so kind as to tell me which room she’s in?’
‘Well, I really shouldn’t … but you have such a charming accent.’
Darkus blushed deeply. ‘It would be much appreciated, yes-yes.’
‘It’s room thirteen-oh-one. On the thirteenth floor.’ She added pleasantly, ‘You know some hotels in Vegas don’t even have a thirteenth floor. It’s considered bad luck. But we’re not superstitious here at the Egyptian.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ replied Darkus. ‘You’ve been extremely helpful.’
He thought about tipping her a few dollars, then concluded it might not be appropriate. He would consult his father on the finer points of tipping versus bribery once he woke up.
Darkus turned away from the reception desk – then
stopped dead: seeing a familiar figure striding across the atrium, her stiletto heels clicking on the marble in perfect time with her swivelling hips. Darkus’s catastrophiser began pounding between his ears as he examined her blonde hair and striking face, compared it against his mental database, checked again to make sure, then identified her as …
Chloe Jaeger
: the murder suspect from their first investigation, assistant to literary agent Bram Beecham, whom she’d killed in cold blood in order to conceal their involvement with the Combination and its sinister self-help book,
The Code
. Chloe had also kidnapped Darkus and Tilly in the deserted tunnels of London’s Down Street Tube station, before Tilly outwitted her with one of Miss Khan’s early prototypes. Chloe’s boss, Underwood, had subsequently fallen under a Tube train – only to reappear very much alive in Harley Street a matter of days ago. Chloe, on the other hand, was
never
apprehended – only to show up here, now, at the Egyptian Hotel.
Coincidence? Impossible, concluded Darkus. Chloe was here on the orders of the Combination. But what was the reason for the game? Why had the Knightleys been lured across the world? To become the victims of a simple murder plot? The Combination could have done that at home. If this was a trap – what was the desired result?
Darkus didn’t move a muscle, using the line of tourists at reception as cover, tracking Chloe with his eyes. She was dressed in a fashionable jacket, blouse and skirt ensemble, as if she were attending a business event. Without even glancing in his direction, she walked to a lift on the opposite wall, entered it, selected a button and the doors closed. Darkus crossed the lobby in haste, watching as the pod sped up the incline at thirty-nine degrees. He could just make out her slim figure through the glass as the lift car slowed, reaching her floor. Darkus scanned the inverted wall and made a brief calculation of the number of storeys. She stepped out on to the
thirteenth
floor
.
Another
coincidence? The line of reasoning was becoming clearer. Had Chloe adopted the name ‘Pam Clorr’? Was she responsible for snatching Bogna? Each storey of the pyramid opened out on to the lobby area, so Darkus would be able to see which direction she took. He watched and waited, squinting up at the rows of rooms, but there was no sign of her. She’d exited the lift, then simply vanished. Maybe there
was
something strange about the thirteenth floor?
Darkus felt an ache from craning his neck, and looked back down, hardly believing what he’d just witnessed. His catastrophiser drummed insistently in the back of his head. Something was wrong here. Very wrong. The words
Vegas
and
trap
echoed around his cranium,
bouncing through the corridors of his deductive mind. Going to the thirteenth floor alone would be suicide. He would have to report back to Tilly and Uncle Bill and work out a plan of action, but first he wanted to complete his reconnaissance of the hotel, while Chloe was safely out of play in her room.
He continued past the twenty-five receptionists, under a cluster of palm trees, past more haunted-looking sphinxes sitting on their beast-like haunches, overseeing the proceedings. The stone walls were etched with hieroglyphs, underlit for maximum effect. Knowing something of ancient Egyptian script, Darkus recognised no genuine logic or sense to any of the inscriptions.
He moved through the bustle of holiday makers, many in shorts with cameras slung round their necks, then passed into the casino area, flanked by several dense rows of digital slot machines, blaring with noise and colour. The word
jackpot
flashed from every direction. Men and women of all ages and descriptions were sitting on high-back stools, hunched over the machines, punching the illuminated buttons, prompting a cacophony of chirping and burping noises as the screens flickered with revolving symbols, before – very occasionally – spewing coins into the plastic cups of the waiting gamblers. The cherries, lemons, oranges, bells and number signs on the displays were their own sort of hieroglyphs: symbols of greed rather
than hope. The gamblers watched intently, waiting for the right combination of signs to appear. It was a game of chance, not skill. As a detective, Darkus could not fathom relying on luck alone: there was no honour to it; no competitive spirit; just a blind belief in murky fate. Many of the gamblers’ faces were desperate, obsessed, their jaws slack, their eyes vacant.
Being under-age, Darkus knew that he wasn’t permitted to do anything more than walk through the gaming area. He wasn’t even allowed to pause. He could explain that he was lost, looking for his parents, or seeking refreshments, but if he lingered near any of the machines, he would be escorted out by members of the ever-present security staff, who were dressed in black, standing at vantage points around the room. Noting the casino guards watching him, Darkus walked further into the bowels of the pyramid, where the slot machines receded to reveal a luxurious cocoon-like space in the centre of the building. This inner sanctum contained semi-circular blackjack tables covered in green felt, with dealers in crisp white shirts and waistcoats dispensing cards, and players arranging them into feathered spreads, alongside stacks of disc-shaped gaming ‘chips’. The chips doubled for currency and would be exchanged for hard cash at the end of the game – whatever time of day or night. Vegas never slept. In fact, it was rumoured the
hotels pumped pure oxygen into the rooms to keep guests awake and alert: able to gamble more and consume more. Food and drink was on hand twenty-four hours a day. The shopping mall provided retail therapy when needed. The casinos were dimly lit and designed like labyrinths, their red walls curving smoothly into infinity, so it was near impossible to find an exit without stumbling into another game. There were no windows, no clocks. Even the frenzied, garish pattern of the carpet was designed to disorient. It was a perfectly sealed, vacuum-packed world with everything a visitor could wish for – and no obvious way out.
The inner sanctum was for the serious players, known as ‘whales’ or ‘high rollers’; often well dressed, well groomed, able to win or lose hundreds of thousands, or even millions, with the throw of a dice or a winning hand. The casinos gave them hotel suites free of charge, knowing how much they would blow at the gambling tables. The games were conducted using a series of cryptic phrases.
‘Care for another one?’ the dealer asked.
‘Hit me.’
The dealer dealt a card.
The player turned it over. ‘
Three of a kind
.’ He laid out three Kings: clubs, hearts and diamonds.
Another dealer shuffled his cards, causing them to
virtually float from one hand to the other. ‘Who’s feeling lucky? Remember: what happens in Vegas
stays
in Vegas.’
Nearby, a roulette wheel spun, the red and black numbers whirling in the opposite direction to the roulette ball, until the ball sunk into a pocket and went for a ride, deciding the gamblers’ fate. Elsewhere, Darkus watched a pair of dice tumble across a basin-shaped craps table, coming to rest on two sixes, known as ‘boxcars’. A whoop went up from the winning player, who was dressed in a dark suit, a Spanish gaucho hat pulled low over his face and a ponytail draping down his back: a high roller, for sure.
Darkus did a double take. This player was familiar to him: that hat, shading a goatee beard. He looked again, not believing his eyes: it was
Mr Presto
… Chloe’s partner in crime; part-time illusionist, full-time Combination agent. Darkus’s heart beat in his throat as he looked away and kept walking, for fear of being recognised. The catastrophiser whirled and clicked like a roulette wheel, alternating between red and black. So the Combination
was
here – in force. And Darkus and his father (not to mention Tilly and the Billochs) were in a world of high stakes trouble. Darkus sneaked a final glance at Presto as the villain collected his winnings – no doubt won through deception with a set of loaded
dice, weighted perfectly to land exactly as he wanted them to.
Darkus searched for a way out of this house of games. He had to get back to Tilly and Uncle Bill before they happened upon the Combination themselves. He tried to retrace his steps, but found the scenery repeating itself: a maze of identical gambling tables; identical rows of slot machines. If he wasn’t careful he could easily find himself face to face with Presto again. Darkus stopped in his tracks and tried a different approach: he licked his finger and held it high above his head, screening out the cool gusts from the air conditioners and instead detecting a slight variation in air pressure, which had to be coming from the open-plan lobby area. He followed his instinct and quickly found himself back at the reception desk. He was heading for the lifts, when an even more familiar voice boomed through the forecourt.