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The state of theart studio in Stockholm was for want of a better term, a luxurious prison. It had everything the boys needed to shut themselves away for the next few weeks; on site personal chefs, plush bedrooms, a games room, a high grade laundry room, and a sauna so authentic it felt like being microwaved in a wooden box.
They had gone to hammer out the final tracks of their new album, but all productivity had currently ground to a screeching, chaotic halt that afternoon. The reason? A missing baseball cap. It was in the hallway this morning and now, it was gone.
“It’s not just any cap, Shane!” Nicky, looking utterly unhinged, paced the length of the mixing room, his hands gesturing so wildly he nearly smacked the soundboard. “It’s the Yankees cap I picked up in New York the first time we visited! It has historical significance! It’s practically a relic!”
Shane, perched calmly on a stool, didn't even bother looking up from his phone. He was quietly, distractingly whistling an extremely earnest, rendition of Ed Sheeran’s "Shape of You."
“You have others until you find the one you misplaced, Nicky.”
“Or stolen by you, I bet,” Nicky muttered darkly, his eyes narrowing to suspicious slits.
“Excuse me?” Shane finally looked up, his brow furrowed with exaggerated innocence. “I haven’t seen your hat. Why would you jump to me? Because?”
“Because you had that look in your eye, the one you get right before you replace my sugar with organic, Himalayan pink salt! It’s anarchy!”
A loud cough came from the doorway. Mark, sipping tea with an almost clinical precision, interjected, “That was Kian, Nicky. And I’m quite sure he used sugar-free sweetener, which is probably way worse actually.”
Nicky ignored Mark, vibrating with rage. “Shane. Where. Is. The. Cap?”
Shane shrugged, a slow, deliberate movement that screamed either innocence or masterful deceit forged over twenty five plus years. “I genuinely have no clue, mate. Not guilty.”
He stood up, ready to go back to the recording booth, when he caught a glimpse of Nicky’s gym bag, which held his brand-new, limited-edition white and gold trainers. A truly wicked grin spread across Shane’s face as a magnificent, paper-based plan formed in his mind. That’ll teach him to accuse me of theft!
Thirty minutes later, Mark was nearly hyperventilating with laughter as Nicky opened his bag to show a hapless crew member his new trainers, only to have a violent, white and blue fountain of finely shredded IKEA catalogue confetti erupt onto the colourful Persian rug.
“SHANE! This means WESTLIFE-LEVEL WAR!”
Mark carried on chuckling with Shane as Nicky brushed away shreds of paper, tipping his trainers about to remove any remaining pieces. It was everywhere and Nicky was not amused.
Nicky’s retaliatory strike on Mark joining ranks with Shane, was swift and surgical. He knew Mark had a truly embarrassing obsession with his designer ankle socks. Nicky slipped into Mark’s room while Mark was recording a soaring, emotional vocal, and grabbed a bundle of socks from a nearby set of drawers, stuffing them into a duty-free bag with the care of a diamond heist.
But what to do with them? Kian. Nicky snickered to himself as he let himself into Kian's room. He spotted his target. Kian's enormous suitcase was currently left open, contents messily in and out of the suitcase. The perfect place. Nicky shoved the bundle of impossibly soft, prohibitively expensive socks right under Kian’s clothing.
Boom. Prank complete. Now, to make himself scarce before anyone saw him.
The following morning, Shane was nursing a coffee in the production lounge, trying to concentrate on a harmony when Mark stormed in, holding up a single, tragic, empty sock drawer.
“My socks. They’re gone. And I know it has to be Nicky. That little menace has taken them all, the sock thieving sociopath!” Mark looked utterly distraught, as if he'd just lost a royalty check. “I only had five pairs left! Now I have nothing but regular socks!”
Shane sighed, rubbing his temples. “This is escalating faster than one of our key changes. But we know what Nicky is like when he gets a bee in his bonnet... he becomes a tiny, aggressive whirlwind of Irish rage.”
“Exactly!” Mark hissed. “And he obviously thinks you and I are partners in crime! We need to prove our innocence before he tries to replace my tea bags with glitter or something equally passive-aggressive.”
“We need proof,” Shane agreed, taking a large gulp of coffee. “Who is the ultimate victim here?”
“Me! Those socks are a lifestyle choice! But also Nicky." Mark conceded . "He just wants his stupid cap back.”
“Right. Operation Cap & Sock Recovery is a go. We need to find out where the cap went. Let’s start with the one place that sees everything, the Eye of Lars CCTV.”
The studio manager, a perpetually tired man named Lars, reluctantly provided them access to the hallway security footage from the previous morning, when the Yankees cap had gone missing from the communal coat rack.
Shane and Mark huddled over the small monitor in a dusty side office, their faces illuminated by the flickering images.
“Okay, 10:00 AM,” Mark narrated. “There’s the rack. There’s the cap. Nice angle of the hallway, actually.”
“Focus, Mark,” Shane urged.
They watched Nicky walking by, checking his phone. Nothing.
Then, Kian appeared. He was carrying a rucksack, his guitar case, and a basket of what looked to be his laundry.
“Look!” Mark whispered, pointing. “Kian just walked past the cap. Completely innocent.”
As Kian moved past, the laundry basket clipped the edge of the coat rack. The security camera, however, didn’t quite capture the basket’s contents.
“Did you see that?” Shane leaned closer.
Lars hit the pause button. The cap was still on the rack.
“Now, play one frame forward,” Shane instructed.
Lars clicked. The image was slightly blurry.
“It’s gone!” Mark exclaimed, slamming his hand on the desk. “The cap is gone! It must have fallen into the laundry basket when Kian bumped it! It swallowed the cap!”
Shane sat back, his mouth agape. “Kian is the cap thief! And he didn’t even know it!”
“But this was yesterday. He would definitely know about it by now.”
“And he has kept quiet. The little bugger!” Shane smiled.
“Now we know, we clearly have to let the chaos unfold. This is better than any documentary.”
Kian had gone down to the complex’s small laundry room, intending to put a quick wash on. He was about to toss his clothes into the machine when his gaze fell upon a familiar sight on top of the pile of washing: Nicky's beloved Yankees cap. How did that get here? Did it travel?
Kian reached for it, intending to take it straight back upstairs and return it to the coat rack.
But just as his hand closed around the brim, he heard it, a noise that echoed the start of pure, unadulterated chaos, Nicky’s high-pitched wail of indignation.
“SHANE!...”
Kian knew that sound. Nicky was pissed about something. His eyes darted to the cap. He just knew this was somehow involved.
He shoved the cap inside his nearby guitar case, and quickly put his washing in the machine. He closed the door and power-walked back to the studio to see what was going on. Nicky was on a missing cap rampage and Shane had since pranked Nicky for accusing him of theft. He could have cleared it all up then but Nickys rage had him staying quiet.
For the rest of the evening, the cap felt like it was burning a hole in his guitar case, which was now permanently parked behind his stool.
Nicky was a relentless, roving presence. He was in and out of the vocal booth, watching everyone suspiciously. When Kian tried to duck out to the toilet, Nicky followed, asking, with forced casualness, if Kian thought shredded paper was an acceptable metaphor for the fragility of fame for their album cover.
There was simply no window of opportunity given.
Kian was slumped on a plush sofa in the lounge, the cap still secured in his guitar case. He wasn’t imagining it, Mark and Shane were giving him knowing, conspiratorial looks. The kind that suggested they new Kian was the cap thief. He was just an accidental thief who couldn’t find a moment alone to return the precious cap.
With recording slowing down for the day, Lars suggested the boys go and have some R&R time because, quite frankly, he had had enough of the bickering and pranks.
The studio’s Swedish sauna was a masterpiece of polished cedar, glass, and intense, unforgiving heat. The air was thick and punishingly dry. Inside, the four Westlife members were arranged on the tiered benches, clad only in shorts, trying desperately to appear relaxed while simmering like four forgotten sausages.
Nicky was still focused on his footwear. “I’m going to be finding that paper for weeks. I think I coughed up a bit this morning.”
Mark, perched on the top bench, wiped sweat from his brow with a small, white towel. His usual composure was gone, replaced by a simmering fury. “Paper is the least of your worries, Nicky. I’m sockless. All five remaining pairs of my designer socks mysteriously vanished! I am experiencing friction!” He pointed to a pair of black sliders near the door.
“It’s the price of justice, Mark,” Nicky declared, glaring at Shane. “You helped him with the cap-"
"I did not!"
"...And so I took your socks, and I put them where a thief’s loot should go.” He pointed a finger at Kian, whose face was rapidly turning the colour of a ripe tomato. “In his luggage.”
“What?!” Kian exclaimed, looking genuinely startled.
Shane threw his hands up dramatically, sending a fine mist of sweat into the air. “Hold on! I should be offended you jumped to the conclusion that I would steal your cap in the first place! The paper in the trainers was righteous retaliation for a grossly false accusation! I’m an innocent man!”
Mark chimed in, leaning forward. “He is! I can vouch for him. We looked at the security footage. Shane is only a prankster, not a thief. His crimes are purely decorative unlike someone else in here.” He looked directly at Kian with a knowing, highly suspicious smirk.
Kian couldn’t take the heat, literal or metaphorical, anymore. He was red-faced, dripping, and about to combust.
“I confess!” Kian choked out, the word sounding strangely muffled in the dense air. “I have the cap! It’s in my guitar case!” Kian blurted, fanning his face with a corner of his towel. “But I didn’t steal it, Nicky! I was going to put a wash on, and somehow it was in my laundry! I have no idea how, though... a mystery!”
“You have my cap?”
Kian nodded.
Nicky leaned forward, eyes narrowed like he was checking the serial numbers on Kian's DNA. “So the paper, you weren’t in on that?”
“No! That was all Shane, the maniac!” Kian protested. “I thought if I walked in holding the cap, you’d jump to conclusions. My only crime was trying to do my laundry!”
Mark scratched at his stubble. “So you had the cap this whole time, and you just decided to keep it?”
“Yes! No! I shoved it in my guitar case. I was going to put it back on the rack, but you kept hovering, Nicky! You kept asking me if I endorsed your choice of shredded paper! I was trying to figure out how to return the cap without being accused of theft or trainer vandalism!”
Nicky was speechless for a moment. Shane started to chuckle, and Mark looked deeply, existentially confused.
“And the socks?” Mark demanded, “My designer socks are-“
“...In Kian’s suitcase,” Nicky deadpanned.
Kian threw his hands up again. “I’M INNOCENT OF THE SOCK CRIME!”
Nicky rubbed his face. “So...you didn’t technically steal the cap. Shane definitely didn’t steal the cap. Mark and Shane weren’t in kahoots but I absolutely stole Mark’s socks and put them in your bag, to frame Kian...”
Shane burst out laughing, hitting the bench with his hand. “This is the most gloriously stupid thing that has ever happened.”
Mark, however, had moved beyond amusement and into a cold, terrifying practicality. “Right. My socks. Kian, I need you to retrieve my socks immediately. I can’t wear sliders anymore.”