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So, the story begins at this trendy party thrown by a man who has an actual infinity pool on the roof of his actual house, and everyone wants to know where the water ends up going but nobody is uncool enough to ask:
"Where do you think all the water goes?" Niall asks Harry, like he has all the answers to everything.
"I'll find out for you," Harry says, instead of just replying that he doesn't know, not because he's ashamed of not knowing (a truly wise man accepts the limits of his knowledge, you see) but because he hates to disappoint Niall. The lad so looks up to him, after all.
"I think a basin catches it at the bottom and then it's pumped back into the pool," Louis says, ruining the mystique.
He snags yet another flute of champagne off a tray balanced perfectly upon the hand of a beautiful server dressed inexplicably as some sort of peacocky bird. It might be the theme of the party—colourful plumage. It would explain why most of the other guests are wearing feathers and sequins and very elaborate hats. Harry, Niall, and Louis stick out like three sore thumbs on a mutant hand, in their pretty-alright-I-guess suits and skinny ties. At least Louis has bothered to put on glittery eyeliner because he has a sense of drama. Harry and Niall look like reasonably tailored lumps.
To confirm that it isn't just all in their heads, they really are doing a poor job of blending in, a very tall, very thin, very hip, and very sequinned man hones in on them like a bird of prey and swoops over, demanding to know who they are and how they got in.
"Harry Styles, private eye," Harry says, out of habit.
"Nick Grimshaw, party planner," the tall shiny man replies in the same manner, with a fairly obvious mocking undertone.
Louis kicks Harry about five seconds too late, since, yeah, he probably shouldn't have blurted out that he's a private eye to the very guy they're here to spy on. It's really Louis' fault for not catching on before he said it.
"I'm Louis, and this is Niall," Louis adds helpfully.
"None of this explains why you're here," Nick says. "Surely you're not on the guest list. I don't recall saying to anyone, 'yeah, invite Jessie Ware, invite Dizzee Rascal, make sure Matt Smith is coming, oh and add this private investigator and some blokes named Louis and Niall.' That seems like something I'd remember saying."
As if to emphasise his point, a statuesque women in a long silver dress with a trailing train of feathers glides by them, knocking into Niall just enough for him to slightly spill his drink and curse profusely.
Nick raises an eyebrow and waits for an explanation.
"We're friends of Zayn," Harry says, because he's a fast thinker in a tight fix and that's what makes him a great private eye. "He added us onto the list."
"Hmm. Zayn," Nick says. His eyes seem to go a bit glassy at the very thought of Zayn. "Well, alright then, if you're his friends. But please, for the love of god, go stand somewhere less obvious. Maybe somewhere darker, where people won't notice you? Please just stop standing in front of the pool gawking like you've never seen water."
With that, Nick twirls off in his impossibly tight trousers and aura of sequins, leaving them to awkwardly shuffle away from the pool while whispering furiously to each other.
"Is it just me," Louis says, "or is Nick a bit fit?"
"Louis!" Harry hisses. "We're not allowed to find a suspect fit! It compromises our objectivity and makes for bad detective work," he adds for the benefit of Niall.
"Okay, but I'm not hearing you disagree," Louis says.
Harry sighs because he can't disagree. "Where the hell is Liam anyway?" he says instead.
This is how the three of us ended up at that trendy party in the first place:
Harry arrives at his office at 11:00 a.m. on a Monday and pauses before entering.
He considers it a matter of strict principle to never come in before 11:00 a.m. on Mondays. He also considers it a matter of strict principle to keep the nameplate on his door as clean as a preacher's conscience. He spit shines the sign with the sleeve of his slate-grey trench coat. "Harry Styles – Private Eye." He had to study long hours at the school of hard knocks and bitter experience to earn that title, and he wants the world to see it sparkle.
When he finally walks inside the office, he's greeted with a familiar sight. Louis, his part-time secretary and full-time flirt, is perched on a corner of his desk, filing his nails into perfect little crescents like it's what he's paid to do. Actually, keeping Harry's name on the door shiny is part of what he's supposedly paid to do, but Louis operates on a strict principle of doing whatever the hell he wants whenever the hell he feels like it. Harry would complain, but Louis' modus operandi has saved his ass more than once. So, rather than commenting on the fact that Louis should probably be doing some secretarial work right about now, Harry just says, "Do you have to do your nails on my desk? You're going to get little bits all over it."
"Oh, I'll get my little bits out on your desk, alright," Louis replies with a saucy wink.
Niall, their adorably clueless errand boy and aspiring detective apprentice, predictably chooses that moment to come rushing in.
"Stop flirting and put your bits away," Niall says, "we have a client!"
Harry hurries to sit behind his desk, making sure to push his papers around so they look like he's been working so hard that he's had no time to tidy up. Louis takes his coat and then busies himself making tea. Niall stands by the door like a bellboy, ready to pull open the door for their client as soon as his shadow falls over the frosted glass.
In through that door walks a tall drink of water, curly hair and beefy arms, with eyes so bright and tail so bushy that he could give Niall a run for his money. Something about his naive little face screams "patsy," but his impressive biceps say he can take care of himself if he needs to, and Harry's never turned down anyone just for being a bit wet behind the ears.
"This is your 11 o'clock appointment, one Mr. Liam Payne," Louis chirps from his own desk, reading aloud from his smart black agenda book, glasses on and pen tucked behind his ear.
"Thank you, Mr. Tomlinson," Harry says. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr. Payne?"
"I want you to investigate my friend's boss," Liam blurts out without preamble. Definitely as green as the newest shoot in springtime, this one. "I think he's using his business as a front for, um, smuggling firearms."
"Start from the beginning and tell me why you think so."
"Okay. Well, my best mate Zayn is, like, the most amazing person in the world. He's clever and funny and when you look at him you just feel like everything's going to be alright, you know? So it wasn't a big surprise when he got a job before he even graduated uni, because who wouldn't want Zayn working for them? And he's really smart and organised, so he's perfect for this job, which is basically like being a party planner? There's this event planning business that throws industry parties for, like, models and popstars and stuff, so people can meet people. And the bloke Zayn works for, Nick, I think he's, like, an arms dealer."
"An arms dealer?"
"Yeah, well, think about it! Guns are banned, but there are all these rich people in the same place and some of them want guns, right, so what better place to do it than right under everybody's nose, where no one will suspect? There are always musicians about, so they just nip into a back room, exchange some guitar cases, and there you go."
Harry is at least eighty percent sure that that's not what arms dealing actually means, but Liam looks so earnest that he has to let him continue.
"Zayn agrees. He totally thinks his boss is hiding something horrible and illegal. And he's so intelligent that if he thinks something's wrong, then it definitely must be. I really love Zayn—" (and Harry is one hundred percent sure that everybody in the room has gathered that by now) "—and I don't want him to get dragged into this or get in trouble for associating with this business. I need you to spy on Nick and get solid evidence so we can turn him in to the police."
"Well, we can—"
"Can you pay the surveillance fee up front?" Louis interrupts. Harry thinks it's a bit rude, but Louis shoots him a look and adds, "It's for security, you see. We don't normally take cases involving arms dealing accusations on nothing but hearsay. We ask that you pay half the fee before we begin, so it's not a total loss if we spend all our time on a wild goose chase."
"Oh, yeah, I, uh, I have the money," Liam stammers. "I can pay right now."
"Excellent," Louis says sweetly. "Then we're at your service."
"We'll need to observe the suspect at one of these parties to gather intelligence," Harry says. "Can you get us in?"
"For sure. There's one happening this Friday; I'm sure Zayn can get us in, because he's such a great assistant that he's basically indispensable, so whatever he says goes. I'll email you the address and time."
Before he leaves, Louis makes sure Liam holds true to his promise that he can pay up front, and extorts twice their usual rate from him with absolutely no complaints from Liam.
"It's a gullibility tax," he says after the door closes behind Liam and Niall starts admonishing him. "Besides, the whole thing sounds like a pointless waste of time, so we might as well be compensated for our inconvenience."
"I wouldn't be so sure," Harry murmurs. "Mysteries have a funny way of sneaking up on us in disguises."
And this is how, in the grand scheme of things, if you accept a pretty broad definition of cause and effect, Nick ended up at that same trendy party:
Five years before the events with which this narrative is primarily concerned, Nick's mate Gillian turns to him and says, "Grimmy, why do you have so many famous friends?"
They're at a club promotion night, which some acquaintance or another of Nick's is guaranteed to be having on any given Friday. They always invite him, he always brings friends, and it's a great system because he hasn't had to pay for his own drinks since before he could legally drink. The guy who's promoting this particular night isn't exactly famous, though, and he points out as much to Gillian.
"Famous, semi-famous, wannabe famous, used to be famous, et cetera," she says dismissively. "The question remains: why do you have so many of them?"
Nick puts down the neon blue concoction in a highball glass he'd been attempting to drink without tasting to genuinely think about it. He hasn't really ever paused to question the facts of his life before. "I don't know, really. It just kind of happened? I just know loads of people, and then they go off and do things, and sometimes they're successful at them. It saves me the trouble of ever trying to do anything myself."
"But why do they bring you along? Why don't they just leave once they're successful?"
Nick frowns. It's never even occurred to him to wonder before. "I don’t know, maybe they're attracted to my hair?"
Gillian eyes his hair. It's thankfully no longer blond, but it's recovering from that awful stage in its life and it's at an awkward length that doesn't suit Nick's jawline at all. "It's definitely not your hair."
"Oh shut up, Gells."
"Anyway, I'm not asking because I'm fascinated by you, Nicholas. I know someone who's just started an event planning company and he's looking for a personal assistant. You should give him a ring. You'd be good at drumming up a cool crowd. He could use your contacts list even if you'd be absolute shit at personally assisting."
"Hey! I could be a great assistant!" Nick swats her.
"You'd be shit," she pronounces with unshakeable confidence. "But you're charming enough that it wouldn't matter, and he'll give you the job just based on who you've got in your phone. Here, his name's Colin; take his card and call him on Monday."
Nick pockets the card and says, "Alright, maybe I will."
And now, back to the trendy party. We should start calling it Party A, because there are going to be a lot of trendy parties in this story, and it's going to get pretty tough to keep them all straight if we keep skipping back and forth in time like this (don't worry though, we'll probably fall into some sort of comfortable linearity soon because this isn't Pulp Fiction):
Harry has a few drinks. One should never drink while on duty, he tells Niall, but in this case they're undercover at a party and they need to blend in, and so if you weigh the pros and cons of inebriation vs. standing out even more than they already do, drinking in this specific instance is excusable.
"Couldn't you order water in a cocktail glass and blend in just as well?" Niall asks.
"Because there's an open bar and the drinks are free!" Louis yells from thirty paces away, doing shots with several tall women in sheer dresses with strategically placed feathers.
"That's why," Harry agrees, knocking back his scotch and then realising too late that scotch really shouldn't be knocked back.
Niall shakes his head and mutters about how they are the worst while he thumps Harry's back through his burning, scotch-induced coughing fit.
When he's just tipsy enough for it to probably be a bad idea, Harry decides that he should try to find Nick again to grill him about his possible involvement in arms dealing.
"I'm not sure that’s..."
Harry waves Niall's protests away. "I'll be fine. I'll be subtle. Stealthy. He won't even realise I'm questioning him. I'll just be like, 'heeeeeey,' and he'll be like, 'I want to tell you everything,' and then we'll know."
"Oh god, I can't watch this. I'm already embarrassed for you. I'll be...over there," Niall says vaguely, wandering away in the direction of some snack trays.
It takes Harry a while to find Nick, not because he's drunk and starting to stumble all over the place, of course, but because it's a large house with multiple storeys and a vast number of people dressed like birds-of-paradise. He has to ask a few people if they've seen Nick, and at one point someone who looks stressed and irritable asks him what the hell he's doing at his party.
"Oh, is this your house? The pool's amazing," Harry says.
"No, this is not my house. It's my client's house. You're not supposed to be here. I told Nick no extra friends for this one, only guest list and A-list."
"Oh, you're! You're. The boss."
"Colin," the stressy man supplies.
"Colin, hi. I'm Harry. Zayn put me on the guest list, Nick isn't my friend. Strictly between you and me, I've been hired to investigate some alleged misconduct in Nick's behaviour."
"Nick?" Colin says with complete incredulity. "Who on earth would think Nick's doing anything wrong? That's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard."
"It's all alleged," Harry assures him. "No proof yet, and I doubt anything will come of it. Still, better safe than sorry, yeah? Have to check him out just in case. Do you know where he is right now?"
"Yeah, he's downstairs, making sure the synchronized swimmers are all here. You can find him by the back door. For the record, though," he adds, "I don't believe a word of these ridiculous allegations and whoever hired you has got something seriously wrong in the head."
"There are going to be synchronized swimmers? In the pool on the roof? This party's amazing, well done," Harry says, giving Colin a double thumbs up. He ignores the rest of what he said, because a good private eye never lets third party opinion crowd his judgement. He'll gather facts and let them speak for themselves.
Harry trips his way down to the back door and catches Nick giving directions to the last girl in a long line of women in shiny swimsuits. As soon as he's done, Harry breaks out his renowned interrogation techniques.
"So," Harry says.
"Oh, hullo," Nick says, spinning around. "You're still here. Where are your friends?"
"The pretty one is trying to empty the bar, and the cute one is probably making a considerable dent in your appetizer reserves by now."
"Which one's which?" Nick asks.
"Are you serious?"
"Well, I mean," Nick says, flapping his hands around. He has very large hands, with long, delicate fingers. They're kind of lovely. "They're both rather pretty, aren't they? And both cute."
Harry stares. "Are you trying to hit on me through my friends, or are you hitting on my friends through me?"
"Both? Maybe?"
This is not how Harry envisioned this conversation would go. It's probably how Louis envisioned it to go, though. He makes a valiant effort to steer the ship back on course. "So, I was thinking, since private investigation can be a dangerous business, maybe I should look into getting a pistol for protection."
A sharp bark of laughter bursts out of Nick. "Is this you trying to impress me? Telling me how dangerous your job is and insinuating things about phallic pump action symbols of manhood?"
So much for throwing bait out there for Nick to take. It was probably too much to hope that Nick would immediately offer to sell him a revolver in a back closet, right here, right now. Perhaps it was too soon. He needed to get closer to Nick, get him to trust him first.
"Don't laugh at me," Harry says, taking a playful swipe at Nick's shoulder. "You plan parties for a living. How butch is that?"
"Hey!" Nick squawks, "I am very butch! A proper lad. Once, I watched some football on the telly for a whole fifteen minutes before I found the remote control."
Harry doesn't have to fake his laughter, doesn't have to fake being charmed. Nick is making this whole undercover getting to know him thing horrendously easy. "How exactly does one plan a party professionally, anyway?"
"I dunno, really." Nick flaps his lovely hands around some more. "They've always just sort of sprung up around me?"
Harry laughs again. He can believe it. They chat some more before Nick has to head upstairs to supervise the synchronized swimming, and soon after Harry catches a glimpse of Liam's curly mop of hair for the first time this evening.
"Where have you been?" he demands, pulling Liam by the elbow into a corner. "I've been questioning Nick with no information and no backup from you, and it's going nowhere."
"Yeah, he can be a bit useless sometimes, can't he? He can be so nice, though," Liam says, as though he hadn't literally put money down on the suspicion that Nick is a criminal.
"Sure, yes, he's nice. But a few days ago you said he's illegally selling firearms, so which is it, Liam? Why did you hire me if you don't even care?"
Liam, whose eyes have been scanning the crowd the whole time Harry's been speaking and who clearly hasn't heard a word he said, perks up at the sight of something. "Look, just keep at it," he says, shaking Harry's grip off his arm. "I'm sure you'll find something."
"Where the hell are you going now?"
"It's Zayn," Liam yells back, like that's any sort of answer at all. Before Harry can say anything in response, he's already disappeared back into the crowd.
Harry looks around in vain, unable to find Liam again and still completely uninformed as to who Zayn really is or what he looks like. It's probably just as well, because the alcohol has fully entered his bloodstream and he's at last pissed enough to admit that he's a little bit pissed. He gives up on the notion of finding any more clues tonight, and wobbles back upstairs in search of Louis and/or Niall.
Louis and Niall find him first. Niall looks even more disapproving of their general life choices than when Harry last left him. Louis looks even more inebriated.
"We ran into Nick," Niall informs Harry grimly. "I tried to ask him some questions about firearms, but I couldn't get anything out of him."
"The fine art of interrogation is very difficult even for professionals," Harry tells him kindly. "It takes years of—"
"I couldn't get a word in edgewise because he couldn't stop talking about how cute you were, and Louis couldn't stop agreeing."
"Oh." Harry pauses. "Well, I am very cute, you have to admit."
"Niall, Niall, you didn't tell him the best part," Louis says. He waves his phone under Harry's nose. "I got Nick's number!"
Harry's a bit put upon, because surely if anyone should be getting Nick's number it should be him, not Louis, since he saw Nick first and everything. But more importantly, "You can't try to get off with the suspect, Louis. He could be a criminal mastermind!"
"I'm your secretary—I was secretarying for you. We need his number in case we need to contact him for further information? Duh?"
Niall's eyes dart back and forth between them. "Sooooo...are we going to try to get off with him, then?"
"Yes," Harry and Louis reply at the same time.
Parties B, C, D, and E:
Nick Grimshaw has a hand in planning a lot of parties.
They go to all of them.
The bouncers always let them in, the drink is always free, and there isn't even the slightest hint of anything even remotely close to approaching something possibly similar to the illegal exchange of money for unlicensed weapons. They watch Nick like hawks, if hawks stalked their prey from the shadows while imbibing too much alcohol and scurried away as soon as their prey noticed them. The more they get to know Nick, the more hapless and charming he seems, and the more improbable it becomes that he knowingly does anything illegal on the side.
"The thing is, right," Louis says, adjusting his silk ascot (he's taken to dressing up as elaborately as the party theme calls for, ostensibly 'to blend in better' but really because he looks great in a wide variety of outfits and likes to show off this fact), "Nick, like, just barely has the wherewithal to do all this stuff right. I just don't think he has it in him to do wrong and then also hide it."
Harry is torn between admiring Louis' ample bottom in his tight velveteen trousers (where does one even find velveteen trousers?) and laughing at him for his unironic use of the word 'wherewithal.' In the end, though, he just settles for agreeing with him. Because he's right. If Nick were a crook, he would be an incompetent one, not one who can conceal his activities from Harry's razor sharp senses for weeks. Unless arms deals happen to just spring up around him like parties, and he just accidentally knows a lot of gunrunners in addition to semi-famous people, it all seems so unlikely.
The other thing that fails to add up is Liam's complete lack of concern. It's the final piece of the puzzle that makes Harry suspect they've been working on the wrong puzzle all along. They've been given pieces and trusted in good faith that they were building the saucy 40s pinup girl in frilly black lingerie on the front of the box, but as they put more and more pieces together it's become impossible to ignore the fact that the picture is starting to look like a basketful of kittens. Or a reproduction of an M.C. Escher drawing. Liam keeps bringing them to the parties, but he never hangs around, barely talks to Nick (and never in a helpful context), and never asks them for updates on the case.
Harry can't shake the feeling that Liam is hiding something.
One day, after most of the parties but before the most important party for the purposes of this narrative, we have a kind of slow day and I'm about to suggest that we close the office early:
It's been days since Harry's even spared a thought for the Nick Grimshaw case. It's been put on the backburner because of a breakthrough another case he's working, a surveillance job that has been occupying most of his recent attention. A wife wanted detailed reports on her husband's mysterious activities, and unsurprisingly, it turned out to be an affair. Nine times out of ten, cases turn out to be affairs.
He's feeling pretty good about the speedy resolution to the adultery case and the money they made, and there's not much else to do for the rest of the day. They've made some inquiries into Nick's background, thrown a few baited lines randomly into the ocean in hopes of a lucky bite, but so far none of their calls have been returned and they're still waiting. Louis is occupying himself by colour-coding his files using twelve different colours of nail polish, and Niall is valiantly fighting the urge to ask him why on earth he owns twelve different colours of nail polish. Harry's just about to suggest that they close up early today when the door opens.
In the classic detective stories, there's always a femme fatale who walks in when a case seems to be growing cold to throw a wrench into the proceedings. She's always tall, dark, and mysterious, and almost always a harbinger of dire warnings. And who should walk in through the door now but a tall, dark, and mysterious man, with legs that stretch on for days and eyes like the blackest coffee. There's a whiff of cigarette smoke about his leather jacket. Harry's not surprised he smokes—dames always do. And he comes bearing a dire warning, as well.
Actually, what he says is, "Can you guys please stop stalking Nick? He's a great guy. I'm sure he'd like to go out with you if you just ask. Yes, all of you. He's very modern like that."
Harry blinks. "Who are you?"
"I'm Zayn Malik. You know, the guy who's been getting your names onto the guest lists for all those parties? I let it go on for a while because Liam asked and because I thought it was sort of cute, but it's starting to get creepy now."
That's when Harry realises two things: first, that Zayn has no clue that they're investigating Nick, and second, that Zayn is so incredibly good-looking that it makes him question reality itself. Judging from the silence from the usually chatty peanut gallery, Louis and Niall think so too.
"Hello, Zayn Malik. I'm Harry Styles, private eye. Your friend Liam hired me to investigate Nick Grimshaw on suspicion of illegal activities. I assume you're either completely ignorant of them, or you're helping him cover them up." Just in case, Harry throws a line out and does some fishing, even though he already has a pretty good idea in his head about what they're really catching.
Zayn laughs (a beautiful, rich, warm, full-bodied laugh, liable to start a few Mediterranean wars if they were in ancient Greek times). "Nick Grimshaw? Are you serious? Like, have you met him?"
Harry is one hundred percent certain that Liam mentioned Zayn sharing his suspicions when he first hired them. In fact, Louis had been in one of his rare moods that day and had decided to actually bother taking notes of the meeting, and he had it on record that Liam had said that Zayn thought Nick was doing something, quote, 'horrible and illegal.' "What's the nature of your relationship with Liam?" Harry asks.
Zayn blushes (it's a sight to behold). "Oh, well. He's my mate. My best mate. He's...um, you know, he's. We're friends. Great friends. He's a great person and I've known him for a little while. That's our relationship. A great friendship that's been going on for a little while," he stutters to a halt.
"I see." He's had an inkling about what's going on for a while now, but now he really does see.
"So anyway," Zayn says, putting himself back together. "Can we agree to just stop following Nick around like a creepy stalker and just talk to him? There's another party this Saturday, a hotel grand opening. Come to it and you can ask Nick out properly." With that, Zayn turns up his collar around his (slender, graceful, superbly-formed) neck and exits the office again.
It's a while before Louis sufficiently recovers his senses to say, "Holy shit. What just happened?"
"What just happened," Harry graciously explains, because not everybody is a brilliant detective like himself and sometimes they can't just put all the pieces together in their head and need more explicit help, "is that we just got our confirmation that Liam doesn't actually have any proof that Nick is an arms dealer. He doesn't even think that Nick is an arms dealer at all. He just hired us as an excuse to accompany us into all those parties and therefore hang around Zayn all the time, because he's smitten with Zayn. There's no case here. We've been used as a pawn in Liam's terrible imitation of romantic advances."
"No, that's not what I meant," Louis says. "I mean, well done you, figuring all that out, but what the hell just happened? I've never met someone so...so...so entrancing that I couldn't even make a sound! I couldn't even ask for his number before he walked back out!"
"I thought we were going to ask Nick out," Niall says.
"We definitely are," Louis assures him. "But that angelic creature! No wonder Liam was too stupid to think straight and came up with a dumb plan involving fake arms dealing."
"So, are we going to the hotel opening on Saturday, then? Because I need to get us better clothes if we are," Niall says.
"Yes," Harry decides. "Besides the whole Nick thing, we really should confront Liam. We have to protect the reputation of our firm. We can't let people think it's okay to just use us like that. Louis, put it on the schedule."
"Yes, boss!" Louis says saucily. He opens a large coil-backed memo book and writes down, 'Saturday, To Do: 1) swank party, 2) defend our honour, 3) guide the course of true love.'
Party F (The is the most important one. If you haven't been paying attention all along, now might be a good time to start, because this is the one that changes everything):
Harry makes a beeline for Liam the moment he sees him. He has to push his way through throngs of people dressed in nothing but black (because of course a party planned by Nick Grimshaw would have a Jay-Z "All Black Everything" theme), but he knows he can't let Liam disappear into the crowd again. It's his MO to stay disappeared for the rest of the night, and there's no way he's getting off the hook so easily this time.
Harry clamps a large hand onto Liam's shoulder, spins him firmly around, and says to his face, "You should just tell Zayn."
"What are you talking about?"
"Arms dealing, Liam? Really? Do you even know what those words mean, or did you just hear the phrase in a movie and think you could kind of make it fit?"
"Why are you being so mean to me?" Liam asks, widening his eyes. Even though Harry knows full well he's looking all innocent and hurt on purpose, it's still frighteningly affective. Harry has to physically refrain from apologising to him, when he's the one who's been a lying little shit.
"Look me in the eye, Liam Payne. What if I say I'm done with the case, and there's nothing more I can do, so I'm going to turn it over to the police and have them investigate Nick? And it's going to be really disruptive to his life, and it might even cost him his job, and it'll be your fault?"
To his credit, Liam holds eye contact for much longer than Harry would have predicted before he slumps into himself and says, "You're right. There were never any guns or rumours or anything. I actually like Nick. He's a good guy."
"You're a good guy too," Harry says softly. He does respect a man who admits when he's wrong. "You should talk to Zayn."
Harry leaves him reddening and stammering and denying, because he's heard it all before, from both Liam and Zayn, and he trusts that between the two of them they can work it out. He turns to collect Louis and Niall and tells them it's time to go.
"But they haven't even served dessert yet," Niall protests. "And I heard there's going to be fireworks at midnight."
"Our work here is done," Harry says. "I've solved the case."
He has to frog-march them a bit, because neither Louis nor Niall wants to leave. They're out of the ballroom but still in the hotel, and Louis is in the middle of making a particularly convincing case for staying by wriggling his bum back against Harry's hip, when the pocket by that hip buzzes.
"Oh, Detective Styles. Fresh!" Louis smirks. He reaches slim fingers into Harry's trousers to fish the vibrating phone out for him.
It's a text from Nick, and it makes Harry stop short. "Okay, we're staying," he says. He turns around and heads straight toward the elevators, walking so quickly that Niall and Louis have to trot to catch up.
"What's up, boss?" Niall asks.
Harry hands him the phone wordlessly. It reads: SRY TO BOTHER BUT HELP? THERE'S A DEAD BODY IN MY HOTEL ROOM. :(
That puts a definite hustle into Niall's and Louis' steps. The three of them hurry to the lifts, trying to run without looking too conspicuous, and end up nearly on top of Liam and Zayn, who have apparently left the party to talk. The two of them are in an alcove next to the lifts. They're standing very close and on the verge of leaning in to each other when Harry and Niall bump into them so hard that Zayn would probably have been knocked onto his arse, if Louis and Liam hadn't both oh so graciously grabbed him before he could fall. They're pretty handsy about it, but Zayn doesn't complain.
"Oh come on," Liam says, a pleading whine in his voice. "You're the one who said go talk to Zayn. I'm trying to talk to Zayn, here. What are you doing?"
"There's a dead body in Nick's room," Niall summarizes.
"We're going to help," Louis adds.
Zayn and Liam exchange a look. Harry's not too surprised when they insist on coming along.
In room 1069 of the newly opened Lotus Hotel, because apparently Nick Grimshaw still finds the number 69 amusing:
Harry stares at the dead body in Nick's hotel room.
It's a woman, late thirties, dressed in all black Versace, no shoes. Draped mostly on one of the beds in the room (did Nick seriously this room just for the number even though it's a double room?), but haphazardly, like she was thrown onto the bed with as little care as possible, limbs askew and half dangling, liable to slide off at any moment. Her hair is over her face. Gunshot wound to the chest, minimal blood. She's wet all over, and smells of chlorine and...vomit?
Harry straightens up from bending over to examine the body. "Nick? Did you throw up on her?"
Nick, standing as far away from the corpse as possible while still remaining in the room. "Maybe a little bit?" he warbles from the door. Louis is patting his back soothingly, and also perhaps inappropriately, seeing as Nick's back does not extend as far down as Louis is putting his hand.
Harry tries to keep his voice even. "Why did you throw up on a dead woman?"
"It wasn't on purpose! It wasn't like I came into my room fully expecting there to be a dead lady on the bed and planning to be sick on her! I didn't write it into my diary, 'vomit on dead woman at midnight,' and then eat a load of bad food in preparation. I was drunk, okay? I am drunk, although not nearly drunk enough to deal with this. I had a few too many, was feeling a bit barfy already, and then came into my room and saw an actual dead person. I've never seen a dead person before. It's very off-putting. So then I was sick. I didn't, like, aim it at the poor dead lady. I was sort of sick all over."
Nick sounds hysterical, which is fair enough. The one thing that concerns Harry right now, besides the fact that foul play has obviously happened, is that Nick's DNA is now all over a corpse that was expressly dumped into his room, probably to set him up. "Do you know who she is? Was?"
"No, I don't think so. Zayn?"
Zayn seems less queasy than Nick, but he isn't thrilled about walking closer to the body either. He takes a quick look and says, "No, sorry. If she was a guest at the party, though, we can check all the lists and figure out who she is."
"Good. We'll do that just as soon as we get rid of the body."
"What?!" several different voices yell at once.
"Look, it's pretty obvious that somebody is trying to frame you for murder, Nick. She was shot after she was already dead. So, first order of business, we move the body so the police will find it somewhere unconnected to you, and second order of business, we find the gun that the killer must've put in your room to make it look like you own the murder weapon."
"Shouldn't first order of business be to call the police?" Liam asks, very sensibly.
"I'm better than the police," Harry says in all seriousness.
"I'm not sure if..."
"I can solve this case faster, because I already know someone's trying to set Nick up. I can skip all the red herrings and false leads and investigating Nick, and get right to the heart of it. The police can work on identifying the body when they find it on the other side of town. I'll work on catching who actually did this."
"How do you—" Nick clears his throat when it comes out still wavering. "I mean, I didn't, but how do you know I didn't do it?"
"Nick, everyone here knows you'd never kill anyone," Zayn says before Harry can answer. As far as compliments go, it sets the bar pretty low, but Nick looks genuinely touched by that statement.
"Right. Now that's established, let's split up and get this done. Liam, I'll need those arms of yours to help me carry the body, and Niall should come with us because this is valuable hands-on experience. Louis, you and Zayn stay here with Nick and find the gun that's hidden in here," Harry orders, all business.
"Whatever you say, boss." Louis salutes. He's a pain most of the time, but never when Harry needs him not to be, and that's why he'll always be Harry's main man. He assigns Nick and Zayn different parts of the room to search, and Harry trusts that he can leave and Louis will hold down the fort.
Harry turns his attention to the corpse on the bed. "Well," he says, taking off his nice jacket so he won't ruin it. "Let's take care of this body, then."
Somewhere between the tenth floor of the Lotus Hotel and my SUV, which I can now admit was parked slightly illegally on a side street, since the statute of limitations has passed on that offence:
"We haven't planned this very well," Niall points out unhelpfully.
He's holding the dead woman's legs, which Harry has begun to unkindly think of as 'the lighter end' of the body, while Harry supports the middle and Liam grips the head area. Harry's of the opinion that Niall's doing the least of the work, but Niall points out that the legs are also the most vomit-y and no one else really wants to be close enough to smell it.
They're in the stairwell, because they've decided that people will be less likely to walk in on them transporting a cadaver if they didn't take the lift. Somewhere along the way, Harry had nicked a sheet from a laundry cart to wrap up the body to preserve what was left of the poor woman's modesty, and to spare them from having to touch her corpse directly. Liam had given Harry a disapproving look for that, but really, the theft of a single bed sheet means very little in the grand scheme of what they're doing right now.
Liam drops the dead woman's head yet again.
"For fuck's sake," Harry says, hoisting his share of the body up higher so it wouldn't just go thumping down the stairs. "Can you please get it together?"
"I'm sorry! It's heavy!"
"How could you do be doing the worst job here? Look at the size of your biceps!"
"I got them from lifting weights, not dead people!"
"Guys, shhh," Niall reminds them. The stairwell five floors (or six or seven, who the hell knows how far they've even managed to make it so far) above a very busy party with lots of photographers and celebrity guests is not a good place to be yelling about a dead body if they don't want to be discovered.
Properly chastised, Harry and Liam shut up and turn their attentions back to the gruesome task at hand.
They make it down two more flights of stairs (and Liam drops his end three more times) before they all need to sit down to take a breather.
"She is surprisingly heavy for someone who looks so skinny," Liam says, indicating the body-shaped column of 300 thread count cotton sheet that they've propped up into a vaguely sitting position on the landing of the stairs, out of some guilty desire to treat the body like a human being to make up for the fact that they've been sort of desecrating it.
"She must have been a model or something," Niall muses. "She was dressed for the party. She was pretty. I wonder what she was like."
Trust Niall to remind them what's really at stake here. An actual person, someone who had loved and been loved, someone who had plans and hobbies and worries and chores. Harry nudges Niall with his shoulder. "We'll find out what happened to her. We'll bring whoever did this to justice."
But first, they have to get her all the way down to Harry's SUV without being noticed, which is looking less and less likely with every minute. Every minute wasted is another minute Nick could be falsely accused of murder while the real murderer gets away.
Which is how they justify their new plan.
"This is horrible. Like, this is really, really horrible," Liam says, like Harry doesn't know.
"I know."
They're looking at the fifth storey laundry chute, and the temptation to just drop the body down it gets harder to resist with each passing second.
"Will she even fit?"
"Yes, if we turn her vertically."
"What if any bits get...caught on something?"
"We'll get one more sheet and wrap her more tightly."
"What if there's someone in the laundry room?"
"The hotel isn't fully operational yet. It's opening party tonight, but they won't be open for real until next week. Only a few VIPs have a room tonight to facilitate the party. There aren't really any guests yet, officially."
"So...what you're saying is...we should toss her down the chute."
Harry's eyes dart between the empty corridor, the door to the stairwell, the opening of the laundry chute, and Niall's and Liam's anxious faces. He makes an executive decision. "Liam, you stay here with the body. Niall, you run down to the laundry room as fast as you can. Liam will send her down as soon as you're in position, and I'll drive my SUV around to the back entrance where they receive deliveries. We can load her into the boot without anyone seeing."
Liam looks like he wants to complain about his assigned role, but Niall is used to taking orders when Harry uses this particular tone of voice and has already run off.
There are approximately a billion things that could go wrong with that slipshod idea, but through sheer dumb luck, none of them do. Everything goes according to plan, and by the time the three of them find themselves reunited, they're in Harry's black SUV, hurtling away from the Lotus Hotel with three pounding hearts and a dead body in the back.
"So, where should we, um, put her?" Niall asks. 'Dump' seems too cruel a word, especially now that they're all using 'her' instead of 'it' to refer to the body.
"Well, first of all, far away, obviously. It needs to be somewhere where we won't be seen, but also somewhere where the police will find her relatively quickly. We don't want anyone to discover her tonight, but we want her to be discovered before she, like, starts decomposing too badly."
"That's very specific," Liam observes, adding nothing to the conversation.
They brainstorm for a while, and eventually decide that they should head for the river. Not because they particularly think the river is the best choice, but because they have no clue as to what the best choice might be, and the river seems to always be where people go when they need to dump (put) a body in spy thrillers.
Harry drives until they're in a secluded area by the river, turns off his headlights and drives for a while longer in the darkness, and finally parks as close to the edge as he can without rolling them all down the bank. They get out of the car and are arguing about how best to transport the body from the boot to the water when the first gunshot ricochets off the SUV's bumper, mere inches from Niall.
Niall yelps and drops his end of the body. Liam, predictably, drops his too.
Harry takes a quick look around and sees the gunman, rolling up in a van, wearing a mask. He has three other masked gunman friends with him, and Harry decides the smartest if not bravest thing to do would be to drop the body as well and dive back into his bulletproof vehicle.
He scrambles back in and yells at Niall and Liam to do the same, and begins driving away as soon as he's sure everyone's in. A few more bullets bounce off the back of his SUV, and he has to swerve to avoid crashing. Harry sees through the rear view mirror that the gun-wielding maniacs grab the body they've dropped and load it into their van. There's no way Harry can make out any details about the van in the dark, least of all the licence plate, and he's almost contemplating the suicidal thought of turning around and tailing them when his mobile rings. He flips it over to Niall.
Niall scrambles to catch it, puts it on speaker. "Hello?"
"You need to get back here," Louis' voice crackles, urgent. "Someone has kidnapped Nick."
Back in room 1069:
"We were turning the place upside down looking for the murder weapon, like you said, and the next thing we knew there were people breaking down the door. They had guns and masks and told us not to try anything stupid, which shows how well they know me," Louis says, managing an impish grin even while recovering from a concussion. "I obviously did the first stupid thing I could think of: I jumped straight onto one's back to try to knock him down, but he was too big for me, and the next thing I knew I was being hit on the head and everything went black."
"When we woke up again, Nick was gone," Zayn adds. He's still sitting on the floor, looking dazed, and Liam is cuddling the life out of him. Harry thinks he has the right idea and goes to cuddle Louis.
"What do we do now?" Niall asks, looking between them. "We don't know where Nick is, don't know where the body is, don't know who the body is, and don't know who the people with the guns are."
"I think we can pretty safely assume the people with the guns are the people who killed the woman," Harry says, words muffled because he's buried his nose into Louis hair. He is really glad Louis isn't hurt. "As who she is..."
I've been withholding this bit of information from you so I could give you this dramatic flashback. It's a cheap narrative trick, I know, but I think you'll appreciate why I did it. If not, feel free to read this out of order and put this paragraph where you think it actually belongs; no one's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to follow my order:
On their way down the second flight of stairs, right after Liam drops the body for the second time, the sheet slips and the dead woman's arm comes flopping into full view. She has a bunch of crumpled wristbands on. They're water damaged and the colours have bled so most of them are beyond recognition, but it dimly registers in Harry's mind that he has seen one of them somewhere before.
Back in room 1069:
"The club, that club," Harry says, snapping his fingers, trying to remember. "Where were we two weeks ago, that burlesque club with that double birthday party?"
"The Painted Lady?" Zayn supplies. (That would be Party D. See, I told you that system would come in handy.)
"Yes! That's it! The dead woman had been there! She was wearing a wristband from that place!"
At least now the next logical thing to do was clear: they had to go back to The Painted Lady.
It all starts to feel a bit like we're in a movie. We've never had a case like this before, with actual life or death situations. We're a small firm, and we mostly scrape by on getting incriminating photos of spouses at hotels with beautiful strangers when they're supposed to be at a professional conference. It pays the rent, but it never makes us feel like we're in a Guy Ritchie production. This is all more than a little surreal, because real life isn't supposed to involve mysterious deaths and missing bodies and interrogations. Real life is mundane. Real life is seeing a burlesque club in full daylight and watching someone wipe down the dirty tables:
INT. THE PAINTED LADY BURLESQUE CLUB – DAY
HARRY (holding up picture)
Do you remember this woman? Do you know where we can find her?
MANAGER
Oh, that's Nadia. Haven't seen her in a couple of weeks, now that you mention it. I'm sure if you hit all the usual spots n the club circuit you'll run into her, though.
HARRY
Really? What does she do?
MANAGER (suspicious)
Why, is she in some kind of trouble? Why are you looking for her?
LOUIS (pipes up)
No, not at all! We're looking to hire her for a...music video.
MANAGER
Hmph. Well then, you'd be the type who knows where to find her. She's a professional party girl, has been filling out numbers for Colin's parties lately, but that's not the only set she hangs out with.
LOUIS (aside, to HARRY, whispering furiously)
Colin! That's Nick's boss!
HARRY
Thank you for your time. We'll, um, we definitely know where to look for her now, thanks.
FADE OUT
The next day, back at private eye HQ, with the blinds drawn and the sign in the front door flipped to 'Closed':
"I think, maybe, possibly, we might have to face the idea that Nick may not be as innocent as we'd like to believe. Like, maybe he called me for help to establish an alibi, when really he did kill her all along."
Harry wants to take back the words as soon as they leave his mouth, but they're out and there's no taking them back, and they hang in the air like a pall making everybody feel terrible. 'Everybody' here consists of Louis and Niall, of course, but also Liam and Zayn, who feel as much a part of this fiasco now as anybody else. Louis and Zayn aren't looking too much worse for wear, thank god. Zayn is, however, looking displeased with Harry. Harry doesn't blame him—he feels displeased with himself too.
"I've known Nick for longer than any of you," Zayn says. "I would bet literally anything I have that he didn't murder someone."
Liam looks like he'd take Zayn's side no matter what the issue was, but this particular opinion is something he'd agree with even if it hadn't come from Zayn. "Even I know Nick would never hurt a fly, and I'm the one who hired you guys to spy on him. Forget what it looks like—what does your gut say? What does your heart say?"
Harry makes eye contact with Louis. Louis makes eye contact with Harry. Harry nods, and they both turn to Niall. Niall says, "We seriously need to find Nick, because whoever killed that woman could be hurting him right now."
With that settled, they start researching. They cobble together what they can from memory, looking up all the possible owners of that make and colour of van, where they could have gotten those guns, who Nadia was, cross referencing the guest lists of all the recent parties Nick has organised. It gets them essentially nowhere, because there are just too many variables, too many unknowns. Harry knows it isn't very professional, but it kind of makes him want to cry. Still, hopeless or not, they keep working, desperately wishing for some kind of miracle breakthrough, scared that if they stop for even the shortest of breaks they'll miss something. Scared that they might already be too late.
The sun sets without them noticing, and the moon's on its way to rising when someone bangs hard enough at the door for the 'Closed' sign to rattle against the glass.
Louis goes to see who it is, because that's technically his job. Everyone else goes with him, because there are murderers on the loose.
It's Nick.
Nick stumbles into the office as soon as the door's unlocked, dishevelled and discombobulated and disgusting and if there's a word beginning with d for 'still in the same clothes from two nights ago' then that too. They make him a cup of tea.
He drinks about thirty-seven gallons of liquid, visits the toilet, rambles something long and disjointed about how he should introduce ASAP Rocky to Professor Green, and then finally settles into a slump on the second least uncomfortable chair in the office.
Harry's hand hovers over Nick's shoulder, wanting to touch but not sure exactly how much breathing room a recent kidnapping victim needs. They've already asked him if he's okay, at least a dozen times each, so instead of asking yet again even though he really wants to, Harry asks, "What happened?"
Nick rouses enough to be able to flap his hands with less than half of the usual gusto that goes into accompanying his stories. "Um, I don't really know? I blacked out, and when I woke up I was on the floor of a moving van with a dead body next to me. I think it was the lady from my room. Unless she has a twin or sommat? That would be really sad for her family, if they're twins and they're both dead. Not that losing one person is any less sad—I'm just saying, two at once would be a hard shock to recover from. Anyway, I assume it was the dead lady from my room, but then I don't know where they took her because they blindfolded me when the van stopped, and they sat me down in a chair and tied me up, and then left me alone."
"How did you get away?"
"I just sort of wiggled about, really. They took the blindfold off the next day, and then they forgot to tie my feet to anything, so when they weren't watching me I literally just wandered off. I had no idea where I was and no money, and I was dying for a kebab, and when I searched my pockets all I could find was the business card Louis gave me. So I showed the card to a homeless gentleman I met on the road and he traded me directions for my watch. Nobody even followed me. I don't think they were professional kidnappers? They seemed awfully bad at it."
There are more important details in everything Nick has just told them, probably, but all Harry can think is, "You kept our card?"
Nick gives Harry a funny look. " 'Course, yeah. I put Louis' number in my phone, but I kept forgetting to put the address and email in too, so I just kept transferring the card to each new trouser pocket like someone from ye olde times, before smart phones."
"That's...I'm glad you had it on you."
Zayn breaks their pregnant pause by going in and giving Nick a hug. "I was really worried about you," Zayn says quietly. "You're the best boss I've ever had."
Nick looks simultaneously devastated and gratified. You get abducted, but then you get to hold an attractive boy with the world's longest eyelashes in your arms. Swings and roundabouts. He pats Zayn's back, and then suddenly freezes. "Wait, wait, hang on, that reminds me: the guys with the guns and the van and the bodysnatching. Their voices sounded familiar. I might've recognised one of them. I think...I think they might work for Colin."
Okay, I know you've been wondering all along why I'm even a private investigator, because it doesn't seem like I'm actually all that good at it, and this case ahs been moving along mostly through blind luck so far. But hear me out, okay? When I've got all the pieces in front of me, sometimes I can see them fitting together, in my head, like some kind of glowing blue sci-fi jigsaw puzzle hologram that hovers before my eyes, zipping into each other to make the big picture, even though that's a different genre:
Nadia had been at the party at The Painted Lady, working for Colin.
The gunmen work for Colin.
Nadia had been found dead at the opening of the Lotus Hotel.
Nadia had probably been alive at some point, attending the opening of the Lotus Hotel.
Colin had been there too.
"Colin, hi. I'm Harry. Zayn put me on the guest list, Nick isn't my friend. Strictly between you and me, I've been hired to investigate some alleged misconduct in Nick's behaviour."
"Nick? Who on earth would think Nick's doing anything wrong? That's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard."
"It's all alleged. No proof yet, and I doubt anything will come of it. Still, better safe than sorry, yeah? Have to check him out just in case."
She had smelt of chlorine. The pool at the Lotus wasn't open to the public yet. Only the event planners had keys to restricted-access areas.
They hadn't seen Colin anywhere, at any time, that whole night.
"I think Colin is our murderer," Harry says, looking up from his intense reverie.
He gets a mixed bag of agreement, incredulity, and confusion, so he runs through the clues and how all signs point to Colin having known the girl quite well, gotten into an altercation with her at the Lotus Hotel party, somehow caused her to drown in the pool, and then panicked and tried to set Nick up for her death.
"But why would he set me up? I thought he loved me!" Nick says with a pout, sounding about equally distraught by the thought of being framed for murder as he does the thought of someone not loving him.
"He was the only person we told about investigating you," Harry explains. "We didn't tell him what for, though. He must have thought it would be easy to make you look suspicious, since you were already under suspicion."
"Wait, you were investigating me? You didn't tell me what for!"
"We weren't really investigating you," Harry starts to say, while at the same time Liam interjects to say, "It was just a misunderstanding."
Liam looks deeply uncomfortable.
Luckily for him, Nick is too busy trying to wrap his head around this new information to notice Liam's guilty shuffling or the hard smack Zayn lands on Liam's arm.
It's Louis who brings them back to the more important issue at hand, here. "Do we have enough to go to the police?"
Harry has dealt with cops enough to know they won't just take the word of a freelance detective even with the biggest grain of salt ever mined go with it. "No. We'll need a confession."
These are apparently the kind of conversations you have whilst you get ready for a confrontation that you're way, way, way underprepared for:
Harry hasn't known Liam for very long, but it's still long enough to know that he places far too much trust in the authority of the police. He's always suggesting they involve them, at any rate.
"We don't even have any jurisdiction! Or training! These are people who have guns, we can't just go marching into their office demanding the truth! They'll just shoot us!" Liam says.
Which is not to say he didn't have a point, but still. Harry's already explained a million times why the police won't help in this situation.
They’ve decided that the best way to get to Colin would be inconspicuously, so he won't suspect a thing. They'll walk into his company in broad daylight, pretending to be clients, and no one will question or stop them because Nick and Zayn work there so it would be perfectly normal for them to lead a ragtag bunch of young ne'er-do-wells into Colin's office. Once there, they will close the door on him, surround him, overwhelm him with their superior numbers, and...something. The whole plan hinges rather outrageously on the hope that he won't have his armed goons right there with him.
Just in case, they've decided they should arm themselves as best they can, should they need to defend themselves from violence. They've pooled their resources to make the best artillery they can on short notice. The pathetic little pile of weapons and "weapons" on the floor before them is a testament to how much actual fighting they ever do.
In the pile, there is: a flick knife, a kitchen knife, a Stanley knife, two pairs of scissors, a nail file, and Louis' glittery purple stapler. There is also a wrench, lying off to the side of the pile rather than properly in it because its merits as a weapon are under heated debate. Zayn thinks it would be good for bludgeoning, but Harry strongly feels that its utility isn't worth its weight and unwieldiness. Zayn kicks it closer to the pile when Harry looks away.
"I kind of wish Nick had actually turned out to be an arms dealer after all. Then I'd feel a lot better about our firepower," Niall jokes, trying to lift the mood because he is an angel.
Liam winces. "Sorry about that. Again."
"I'm starting to get over it, actually," Nick says. "In fact, I'm starting to find it a little bit complimentary that anybody ever believed that I could, like, run a secret business selling guns like an actual hard man?"
Harry doesn't tell him that they only believed it up until they met him in person, because it's important to let people have that boost for their self-esteem sometimes.
They look down at their sad little pile of weapons. Harry's starting to think he should concede to the wrench.
"So!" Louis says brightly, "are we ready to gouge out this guy's eyes until he tells us the truth?"
"If this doesn't work," Liam says, and they're all about to groan at him again because seriously, why did he always have to be so sensible and therefore such a downer? But then he continues, "I'm glad I at least got to meet you all. And there's no one else I'd rather walk into a murderer's office with than you lot."
Harry has never felt a spontaneous need to hug five other people at once before, but if ever a time called for it, it would be now. Without needing to talk it over, they bring it in for a group cuddle, and for a moment there it feels right, like this is what they should always be doing—not hugging (although that would be nice too), but facing something together.
The choosing of the weapons is a dubious ceremony. Zayn is the only one who even knows how to use a flick knife, and so he gets it by default. He also gets the wrench because he was the one who insisted on it. He looks surprisingly believable with them—his broody good looks mean he could pass as a street tough with incredible bone structure. Niall takes the kitchen knife, Liam takes the Stanley knife, and Harry and Nick take a pair of scissors each. Nick looks at his pair like he has no idea what the hell to do with them, which is fair enough. None of them really do.
"I'll take her," Louis says, claiming his own stapler. "No one knows how to handle her like I do." He flips it open and shoots a staple to demonstrate. It flies truer and faster than anyone would expect. He has spent a lot of time on the clock not doing any of the work he was supposed to be doing in order to perfect using that stapler as a projectile weapon.
"Alright lads," Louis says, still sounding bright and chirpy. Harry was beginning to suspect he was rather enjoying this. "Remember, when in doubt, aim for the eyes!"
The receptionist at Colin's office is named Celia, and she seems really nice. She smells like green apples, she greets Nick with some clever joke that everyone would probably have laughed at if we weren't so nervous that we wanted to puke through our eyes, and she pretends to grill us about our fake appointment for our fake contract meeting to talk about hiring Colin to plan our fake album release party for our fake band, but ultimately she trusts Nick enough that she doesn't even double check the appointment book:
"Alright, I won't keep you," Celia says, flicking a paper clip at Nick's head. "Just walk on in. I'm sure he's just been sitting in there playing Angry Birds all morning anyway."
'In there' refers, of course, to Colin's office, and Nick very subtly tries to ask if Celia has seen any suspicious characters possibly concealing weapons under their jackets enter said office. He's a bit too subtle, and Celia has no clue what he means. "He didn't have any other meetings scheduled today, I'm pretty sure," she says, confused about the question. "Just walk on in," she repeats.
They all exchange one last look with each other, one last nod of solidarity, and then they're walking into Colin's office. Harry fingers the scissors in his pocket and wonders why he never went into something safe like accounting instead. He wonders why, even now, as he watches Nick push open Colin's door with white knuckles and follows him inside, he would rather be here than doing something safe like accounting.
Colin is sitting with his chair turned, back to the door. He's alone.
"Hello Colin," Nick says, rather calmly.
Colin's shoulders visibly hitch up in a dramatic flinch, and he swings around wildly, startling backwards enough for his chair to wheel back a few centimetres when he sees there's six of them. "Nick. You're...here."
"What, as opposed to elsewhere, tied up in the back of a van? Those plastic-y zip tie things hurt, you wanker."
For a second, Harry's sure Colin's going to fight them. He sort of rises up from his seat like a less-threatening version of an angry bear, and it doesn't look like any armed gunmen about to burst in to help him dismember them, so it looks like they can probably take him, since it's six-to-one. But then he deflates again, drops back into his seat and covers his face with his hands, slumping down.
"It was an accident!" Colin says, sounding muffled and tired and possibly teary. "I didn't mean to. None of this was supposed to happen like this."
They eye each other. Zayn's still gripping his wrench, not relaxing because this could well be some sort of diversionary tactic. Harry's with him. "What wasn't supposed to happen like how?" he prompts.
"Nadia, she wasn't supposed to drown. I panicked. We used to date, but I stopped seeing her when Chloe and I got engaged. Well...I mostly stopped seeing her. I still saw her a little bit, every now and then. And when she told me to meet her by the pool, I thought maybe she wanted one last romp before we said our goodbyes since the wedding's coming up, but then what she really wanted to talk about was pay I supposedly owed her, except I didn't owe her anything! Ask Jeanie in accounting! She was trying to extort me, I swear. She said if I didn't pay her what she said then she would tell Chloe and everyone about how I've been sleeping with her, and one thing led to another, and we had a bit of a scuffle and she fell in the pool, and she wouldn't even have drowned, except some of the sound equipment fell into the pool and she was electrocuted and everything happened so fast, there was nothing I could do. The next thing I knew, there was a dead body and my security people were saying we should get rid of it, and I remembered Nick was being investigated already, so I thought..."
Colin trails off, full on bawling at this point, big, fat, wet tears that fail to elicit any sympathy from any of them. There are so many holes in his story that Harry's inclined to think he made up half of it to put himself in a better light. Chucking it into your employee's hotel room is not the contrite way one treats the body of someone you didn't mean to accidentally kill, and the whole thing sounds a bit too pre-meditated to be entirely an accident anyway. Harry's neither judge nor jury, though, and so he just says, "We need to turn you over to the police." (Sorry to break the fourth wall again, but at this juncture I just want to point out that, like I said, nine times out of ten, cases turn out to affairs. Bet you didn't realise that was foreshadowing the first time around, did you? You can scroll way back up and re-read that part with newfound understanding if you want, I'll wait here.)
The other guys are less neutral in choosing what to say to Colin.
"You are a disgusting human being!" Nick squawks, hands flapping full throttle like they have a mind of their own. "Chloe is my friend, you vile dickbag! Why would you do that to her? And why would you kill someone and not immediately call every authority you can think of so you can cry profusely and beg for punishment? Whose first thought after that happens is 'well, I can probably pin it on this guy who's done nothing but good work for me', huh? WHO?! Nobody! Just vile, disgusting people like you!"
"I can't believe I ever worked for you," Zayn said, sounding equally disgusted. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Liam, always sensible, asks probably the most important question of them all at the moment: "Where's Nadia's body now?"
"She's still in the back of the van!" Colin sobs. "I didn't know what to do after, and my security guys quit when they realised they were being led further and further by someone who had no clue what the hell they were doing... "
Niall turns a bit green at that news. It's been quite a few hours...days, even, since she's died. That van cannot smell good. "But why did you even take the body? Why did you take Nick?"
"We panicked! I panicked. When the first plan didn't work, I thought Nick must have figured out what happened, so I thought I'd better get rid of all the traces and make sure no one ever found her. And then I thought I needed to get rid of Nick too, only...I'm not actually a murderer, yeah? I wasn't ever actually going to kill Nick, or any of you. You believe me, right?"
"We need to turn you over to the police," Harry repeats.
Colin nods, resigned. "I know."
They walk past a mystified Celia's desk with Colin firmly blocked on all sides, and Nick passes her a few business cards and tells her he'll be happy to write her reference letters, because everybody at this company is about to be made redundant by their boss's arrest.
A few weeks later, back at Harry Styles – Private Eye headquarters:
Louis finishes cutting out yet another article from the newspaper and pins it up onto their bulletin board, next to all of the other ones that have headlines like "Grisly murder uncovered by private detectives!" and "Police arrest party planner in connection with missing woman" and "Chilling killer grilled by slick private dick". The latest one to join the board reads, "Man convicted of manslaughter, grieving family thanks private eye and co."
"I like the way they wrote 'and co.'," Louis comments. "It really acknowledges all the hard work we contribute, in a way you never do."
"Maybe we should change the sign on the door to say 'Harry Styles & Co. – Private Eyes'," Niall suggests.
"Maybe you can put whatever you want on your own door someday, when you're good enough to keep your own business afloat," Harry retorts.
"I think you should add a bell to the door," Nick says, waltzing into the conversation, "so you can tell when someone's coming in." He has Zayn and Liam with him, and the six of them share a long moment of just beaming at each other like idiots, feeling that ridiculous urge to group hug again for no reason.
Liam finally breaks the silence by saying, "So, congratulations on getting your names in the papers! It must be good publicity for the firm."
Niall and Louis nudge Harry so hard from either side that he nearly falls on his face. Harry clears his throat. "Um, yeah. About that. So, since our name's been in the papers, we've been getting a lot more business, maybe more than we can handle with just three people, and we were thinking, maybe, I mean if you want, since you're kind of unemployed now and we were sort of responsible for putting your boss in prison..."
"Do you want to come work for us?" Louis says for him.
"What, me and Zayn?"
"And Liam."
"I don't know anything about solving mysteries. What am I going to do for you?"
"While it's true you don't bring any skills, expertise, or physical assets to the table," Harry says slowly, with a smile that stretches into a full-blown grin when Nick swats him playfully, "we could use all the good luck you seem to be blessed with. Like you said, things just sort of happen around you. And it's not like you knew anything about planning parties before you did your last job."
"And what about me? What do I bring to the table?" Zayn asks, doing a decent job of maintaining a poker face. But his voice betrays how happy he is at the prospect of joining them.
"A really, really good face for us to look at all day? And also organisational skills, planning skills, and an ability to accurately judge character."
"And Liam," Louis adds. "You bring us Liam's undying loyalty, because if you're with us then he's with us, and he has very practical ideas and also a lot of upper body strength, which are both things we need."
"It's true," Harry says, "we want Nick and we want you and we want Liam's biceps, not that they helped us any when we actually had to lift something rather heavy for a distance."
"Oh, would you get over it," Liam scoffs, and at the same time Niall says "just let it go, Harry," and Harry says "you mean let go, like Liam let go of that body multiple times?" and Zayn defends his man and Nick and Louis have to add their opinions just to feel involved even though they weren't even there and the stupid bickering feels so perfect, so much like how they're going to be from here on out, that Harry forgets they haven't actually said yes yet.
"So? Are you in?" he asks, just to be sure.
"Obviously, yes," Nick says, rolling his eyes. "I'm kind of unemployed now, aren't I? Can't exactly keep up my lifestyle of excessive drinking and never-ending snacks for Great British Bake Off marathons if I'm on the dole, can I? Besides, I can't work without Zayn anymore, I've become too used to seeing his soothing face every day and I'm dependent on him now."
"You're saying yes based on the assumption that I'm going to say yes?"
"Oi, stop putting poor Niall through all this suspense," Liam says. "He looks like he's about to pop. We all know all three of us are going to say yes. We're meant to be here."
And just like that, Harry can no longer resist the urge and pulls them all into a group hug. There's a really good excuse: they're newly incorporated. They're family.
They decide they need to go out for drinks to celebrate, even though it's the middle of the day. ("Don't worry, the boozy 1920s detective look is very on trend," Nick assures them. "Your clients would probably trust you less if you were completely sober at every meeting. We should get a decanter for your desk.") Before they leave, though, Niall writes a memo on his to-do list without being asked: 'get sign on door changed to Harry Styles & Co. – Private Eyes.'
~ ~ ~end!