Private Games Read online

  Everyone was saying it was over. Capturing the mad professor was only a matter of time. The investigation was simply a manhunt now.

  But Knight was nevertheless concerned that another killing might be coming. He’d taken to studying the Olympic schedule at all hours of the night, trying to anticipate where Cronus might strike again. It would be somewhere high-profile, he figured, with intense media coverage, as there was here in the Aquatics Centre as Pierce tried to become the oldest woman ever to win the platform competition.

  The American diver hoisted herself from the pool, grabbed a towel, ran over, and slapped the outstretched hands of her children before heading towards the jacuzzi to keep her muscles supple. Before she got there, a roar went up at the scores that flashed on the board: all high eights and nines. Pierce had just moved herself into the silver medal position.

  Knight clapped again with even more enthusiasm. The London Games needed a feel-good story to counteract the pall that Cronus had cast over the Games, and this was it. Pierce was defying her age, the odds, and the murders. Indeed, she’d become something of a spokesman for the US Team, decrying Cronus in the wake of Teeter’s death. And now here she was, within striking distance of gold.

  I am damn lucky to be here, Knight thought. Despite everything, I’m lucky in many ways, especially to have found that Marta.

  The woman felt like a gift from on high. His kids were different creatures around her, as if she were the Pied Piper or something. Luke was even talking about using the ‘big-boy loo’. And she was incredibly professional. His house had never looked so organised and clean. All in all, it was as if a great weight had been lifted from Knight’s shoulders, freeing him to hunt for the madman stalking the Olympics.

  At the same time, however, his mother had begun to retreat into her old pre-Denton Marshall ways. She’d opted to hold a memorial for Marshall after the Olympics, and had then disappeared into her work. And there was a bitterness that crept into her voice every time Knight talked to her.

  ‘Do you ever answer your mobile, Knight?’ Karen Pope complained.

  Startled, Knight looked round, surprised to see the reporter standing next to him in the entryway. ‘I’ve been having problems with it, actually,’ he said.

  That was true. For the past day, there’d been an odd static audible during Knight’s cellular connections, but he had not had time to have the phone looked at.

  ‘Get a new phone, then,’ Pope snapped. ‘I’m under a lot of pressure to produce and I need your help.’

  ‘Looks to me like you’re doing just fine on your own,’ Knight said.

  Indeed, in addition to the story about the things found on Farrell’s home computer, Pope had published an article detailing the results of Teeter’s autopsy: the shot-putter had been given a cocktail not of poisons but of drugs designed to radically raise his blood pressure and heart rate, which had resulted in a haemorrhage of his pulmonary artery, hence the bloody foam that Knight had seen on his lips.

  In the same story, Pope had got an inside scoop from Mike Lancer explaining how Farrell must have isolated a flaw in the Olympics’ IT system, which had allowed her a gateway into the Games’ server and the scoreboard set-up.

  Lancer said the flaw had been isolated and fixed and all volunteers were being doubly scrutinised. Lancer also revealed that security cameras had caught a woman wearing a Games Master uniform handing Teeter a bottle of water shortly before the Parade of Athletes but she’d been wearing one of the hats given to volunteers, which had hidden her face.

  ‘Please, Knight,’ Pope pleaded. ‘I need something here.’

  ‘You know more than me,’ he replied, watching as the Panamanian in third place made an over-rotation on her last dive, costing her critical points.

  Then the South Korean athlete in first place faltered. Her jump lacked snap and it affected the entire trajectory of her dive, resulting in a mediocre score.

  The door was wide open for Pierce now, Knight thought, growing excited. He could not take his gaze off the American doctor as she began to climb to the top of the diving tower for her fifth and final dive.

  Pope poked him in the arm and said, ‘Someone told me Inspector Pottersfield is your sister-in-law. You have to know things that I don’t.’

  ‘Elaine does not talk to me unless she absolutely has to,’ Knight said, lowering his binoculars.

  ‘Why’s that?’ Pope asked, sceptically.

  ‘Because she thinks I’m responsible for my wife’s death.’

  Chapter 52

  KNIGHT WATCHED PIERCE reach the three-storey-high platform, and then he glanced over at Pope to find that the reporter was looking shocked.

  ‘Were you? Responsible?’ she asked.

  Knight sighed. ‘Kate had problems during the pregnancy, but wanted the delivery to be natural and at home. I knew the risks – we both knew the risks – but I deferred to her. If she’d been in hospital, she would have lived. I’ll wrestle with that for the rest of my life because, apart from my own feelings of loss and remorse, Elaine Pottersfield won’t let me forget it.’

  Knight’s admission confused and saddened Pope. ‘Anyone ever tell you that you’re a complicated guy?’

  He did not reply. He was focused on Pierce, praying that she’d pull it off. He’d never been a huge sports fan, but this felt … well, monumental for some reason. Here she was, thirty-eight, a widow and a mother of three about to make her fifth and final dive, the most difficult in her repertoire.

  At stake: Olympic gold.

  But Pierce looked cool as she settled and then took two quick strides to the edge of the platform. She leaped out and up into the pike position. She flipped back towards the platform in a gainer, twisted, and then somersaulted twice more before knifing into the water.

  The crowd exploded. Pierce’s son and daughters began dancing and hugging each other.

  ‘She did it!’ Knight cried and felt tears in his eyes and then confusion: why was he getting so emotional about this?

  He couldn’t answer the question, but he had goose bumps when Pierce ran to her children amid applause that turned deafening when the scores went up, confirming her gold-medal win.

  ‘OK, so she won,’ Pope said snippily. ‘Please, Knight. Help a girl out.’

  Knight had an angry look about him as he yanked out his phone. ‘I’ve got a copy of the complete inventory of items they found at Farrell’s flat and her office.’

  Pope’s eyes grew wide. Then she said, ‘Thanks, Knight. I owe you.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  ‘It is over, then, really?’ Pope said, with more than a little sadness in her voice. ‘Just a manhunt from here on out. With all the beefed-up security, it would be impossible for Farrell to strike again. I mean, right?’

  Knight nodded as he watched Pierce holding her children, smiling through her tears, and felt thoroughly satisfied. Some kind of balance had been achieved with the American diver’s performance.

  Of course, other athletes had already shown remarkable fortitude in the last four days of competition. A swimmer from Australia had come back from a shattered right leg last year to win swimming gold in the men’s 400-metre freestyle race. A flyweight boxer from Niger, raised in abject poverty and subjected to long periods of malnourishment, had somehow developed a lion’s heart that had allowed him to win his first two boxing matches with first-round knockouts.

  But Pierce’s story and her vocal defiance of Cronus seemed to echo and magnify what continued to be right with the modern Olympic Games. The doctor had shown grace under incredible pressure. She’d shaken off Teeter’s death and had won. As a result the Games no longer felt as tainted. At least to Knight.

  Then his mobile rang. It was Hooligan.

  ‘What do you know that I don’t, mate?’ Knight asked in an upbeat voice, provoking a sneer from Pope.

  ‘Those skin cells we found in the second letter?’ Hooligan said, sounding shaken. ‘For three days, I get no match. But then, through an old fr
iend from MI5, I access a NATO database in Brussels. And I get a hit – a mind-boggling hit.’

  Knight’s happiness over Pierce’s win subsided, and he turned away from Pope, saying, ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The DNA matches a hair sample taken in the mid-1990s as part of a drug-screening test given to people applying to be consultants to the NATO peacekeeping contingent that went to the Balkans to enforce the ceasefire.’

  Knight was confused. Farrell had been in the Balkans at some point in the 1990s. But Hooligan had said his initial examination indicated that the skin cells in the second letter from Cronus belonged to a male.

  ‘Whose DNA is it?’ Knight demanded.

  ‘Indiana Jones,’ Hooligan said, sounding very disappointed. ‘Indiana Fuckin’ Jones.’

  Chapter 53

  FIVE MILES AWAY, and several hundred yards south of the Thames in Greenwich, Petra and Teagan walked under leaden skies towards the security gate of the O2 Arena, an ultra-modern white-domed structure perforated by and trussed to yellow towers that held the roof in place. The O2 Arena sat at the north end of a peninsula and normally played host to concerts and larger theatrical productions. But for the Olympics it had been transformed into the gymnastics venue.

  Petra and Teagan were dressed in official Games Master uniforms, and carried official credentials that identified them as recruited and vetted volunteers for that evening’s Olympic highlight event: the women’s team gymnastics final.

  Teagan looked grim, focused, and determined as they walked towards the line of volunteers and concessionaires waiting to clear security. But Petra appeared uncertain, and she was walking with a hesitant gait.

  ‘I said I was sorry,’ Petra said.

  Teagan said icily: ‘Hardly the actions of a superior being.’

  ‘My mind was elsewhere,’ her sister replied.

  ‘Where else could you possibly be? This is the moment we’ve waited for!’

  Petra hesitated before complaining in a whisper: ‘This isn’t like the other tasks that Cronus has given us. It feels like a suicide mission. The end of two Furies.’

  Teagan halted and glared at her sister. ‘First the letter and now doubts?’

  Petra’s attitude hardened. ‘What if we get caught?’

  ‘We won’t.’

  ‘But—’

  Teagan cut her off, asking archly, ‘Do you honestly want me to call Cronus and say that now, at the last minute, you are leaving this to me? Do you really want to provoke him like that?’

  Petra blinked and then her expression twisted towards alarm. ‘No. No, I never said anything like that. Please. I’ll … I’ll do it.’ She straightened and brushed her jacket with her fingers. ‘A moment of doubt,’ she added. ‘That’s all. Nothing more than that. Even superior beings entertain doubt, sister.’

  ‘No, they don’t,’ said Teagan, thinking ‘impetuous’ and ‘lacking in attention to detail’ – wasn’t that how Cronus had described her younger sister?

  Some of that was definitely true. Petra had just now proved it, hadn’t she?

  As they’d waited on a pavement near King’s College, their only stop on the way to the gymnastics venue, the youngest of the Furies had forgotten to keep her gloves on when getting out the latest letter to Pope. Teagan had gone over the package with a disposable wipe, and had then held it with the wipe until she could pass the envelope to a bicycle messenger who gave them a sharp but cursory glance in their fat-women disguises.

  As if in reaction to the same memory, Petra raised her chin towards Teagan. ‘I know who I am, sister. I know what fate holds for me. I’m clear about that now.’

  Teagan hesitated, but then gestured to Petra to lead on. Despite her sister’s doubts, Teagan felt nothing but waves of certainty and pleasure. Drugging a man to death was one thing, but there was no substitute for looking the person you were about to kill in the eye, showing them your power.

  It had been years since that had happened – since Bosnia, in fact. What she had done back then should have been fuel for nightmares, but it was not so for Teagan.

  She often dreamed of the men and boys she’d executed in the wake of her parents’ death and the gang rape. Those bloody dreams were Teagan’s favourites, true fantasies that she enjoyed reliving again and again.

  Teagan smiled, thinking that the acts she would commit tonight would ensure that she’d have a new dream for years to come, something to celebrate in the dark, something to cling to when times got rough.

  At last they reached the X-ray screeners. Stone-faced Gurkhas armed with automatic weapons flanked the check-point, and for a moment Teagan feared that Petra might baulk and retreat at the show of force.

  But her sister acted like a pro and handed her identification to the guard, who ran her badge through a reader and checked her face against computer records that identified her as ‘Caroline Thorson’. Those same records indicated that she was a diabetic and therefore cleared to bring an insulin kit into the venue.

  The guard pointed to a grey plastic tub. ‘Insulin kit and anything metal in there. Jewellery, too,’ he said, pointing at the pitted silver ring she wore.

  Petra smiled, tugged the ring off and set it beside the insulin kit in the tray. She walked through the metal-detectors without incident.

  Teagan took off a ring identical to her sister’s and put it in the tray after her credentials checked out. ‘Same ring?’ the guard said.

  Teagan smiled and gestured towards Petra. ‘We’re cousins. The rings were presents from our grandma who loved the Olympics. The poor dear passed on last year. We’re wearing them in her honour to every event we work.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ the guard said, and waved her through.

  Chapter 54

  THE ORBIT’S OBSERVATION deck revolved slowly clock-wise, offering a panoramic view of the interior of the Olympic Stadium where several athletes and coaches were inspecting the track, and of the Aquatics Centre that Knight had only just left.

  Standing at the deck’s railing in a cooling east wind that sent clouds scudding across a leaden sky, Mike Lancer squinted at Knight and said: ‘You mean the television guy?’

  ‘And Greek antiquities curator at the British Museum.’

  Jack Morgan said, ‘Does Scotland Yard know about this yet?’

  Knight had called Jack Morgan and had been told that he and Lancer were up on the Orbit, inspecting security on the Olympic flame. Knight had rushed over. He nodded to Jack’s question and said, ‘I just spoke with Elaine Pottersfield. She has squads en route to the museum and to his house.’

  For several moments there was silence, and all Knight was really aware of was the smell of carbon in the air, coming from the Olympic cauldron burning on the roof above them.

  ‘How do we know for sure that Daring has gone missing?’ Jack asked.

  Knight replied, ‘I called his secretary before I called Elaine, and she told me that the last time anyone saw Daring was last Thursday night around ten o’clock when he left the reception for his exhibit. That was probably six hours after Selena Farrell was last seen as well.’

  Lancer shook his head. ‘Did you see that coming, Peter? That they could have been in on it together?’

  ‘I didn’t even consider the possibility,’ Knight admitted. ‘But they both served with NATO in the Balkans during the mid-1990s, they both had issues with the modern Olympic Games, and there’s no denying the DNA results.’

  Lancer said, ‘Now that we know who they are, it’s only a matter of time until they’re caught.’

  ‘Unless they manage to strike again before they’re caught,’ Jack said.

  The LOCOG security adviser blanched, puffed out his lips, and exhaled with worry. ‘Where? That’s the question I keep asking myself.’

  ‘Somewhere big,’ Knight said. ‘They killed during the opening ceremony because it gave them a world audience.’

  Jack said, ‘Okay, so what’s the biggest event left?’

  Lancer shrugged. ‘The sprints have drawn
the most interest. Millions of people applied for seats in the stadium this coming Sunday evening – the final of the men’s 100-metre sprint – because of the possibility of a showdown between Zeke Shaw and Filatri Mundaho.’

  ‘What about today or tomorrow? What’s the ticket everyone wants?’ Knight asked.

  ‘Has to be the women’s gymnastics, I’d think,’ Jack said. ‘Carries the biggest television audience in the States, anyway.’

  Lancer glanced at his watch and reacted as though his stomach had just soured. ‘The women’s team final starts in less than an hour.’

  Anxiety coiled through Knight as he said, ‘If I were Cronus, and wanted to make a big statement, women’s gymnastics is where I’d attack next.’

  Lancer grimaced and started heading for the lift, saying, ‘I hate to say it, but I think you may be right, Peter.’

  ‘What’s the fastest way to the gymnastics venue?’ Jack demanded, hustling after the LOCOG member.

  ‘Blackwall Tunnel,’ Knight said.

  ‘No,’ Lancer said. ‘Scotland Yard’s got it closed during the competitions to prevent a possible car bombing. We’ll go by river bus.’

  Chapter 55

  AFTER CHECKING IN with Petra’s immediate supervisors, the sisters scouted out the seats for which she would act as usher. They were low and at the north end of the O2 Arena, just off the vault floor. Teagan left her sister at that point, and found the hospitality suite to which she’d been assigned as a waitress. She told her team leader there that she would return after a quick trip to the loo.

  Petra was waiting. They took stalls next to each other.

  Teagan opened the seat-cover dispenser in her stall and retrieved two slender, green CO2 canisters and two sets of plastic tweezers that had been taped there.