Private Games Read online

  Chapter 90

  ‘OF COURSE YOU’D heard that music before,’ Pottersfield shot back. ‘It was all over your computer. So was a program used to take control of the Olympic Stadium’s electronic billboard on the night of the opening ceremony.’

  ‘What?’ the professor cried, struggling to sit upright and wincing in pain. ‘No, no! Someone began sending me that music about a year ago on my phone machine and in attachments to e-mails from blind accounts. It was like I was being stalked. After a while, any time I heard it I got sick.’

  ‘Convenient nonsense,’ Pottersfield snapped. ‘What about the program on your computer?’

  ‘I don’t know what program you’re talking about. Someone must have put it on there – maybe whoever was sending me the music.’

  Knight was incredulous. ‘Did you report this cyber-stalking to anyone?’

  The classics professor nodded firmly. ‘Twice, as a matter of fact, at Wapping police station. But the detectives said flute music was not a crime, and I had no other proof that someone was stalking me. I said I had suspicions about who was behind the music, but they didn’t want to hear any of it. They advised me to change my phone number and my e-mail address, which I did. It stopped. And the headaches stopped, too – until you played the music again in my office.’

  Knight squinted, trying to make sense of this explanation. Was it possible that Farrell had been set up as a diversion of some sort? Why hadn’t she just been killed?

  Pottersfield must have been thinking along the same lines because she asked, ‘Who did you think was behind the music?’

  Farrell gave a little shrug. ‘Well, I’ve only known one person in my life who plays a Pan flute.’

  Knight and Pottersfield said nothing.

  ‘Jim Daring,’ the professor said. ‘You know, the guy at the British Museum? The one who has the television show?’

  That changed things, Knight thought, remembering how Daring had spoken highly of Farrell and repeatedly told him and Pope to go and see her. Was it all part of an attempt to frame her?

  Pottersfield still sounded sharply sceptical. ‘How do you know he played a Pan flute and why ever would he use the music to harass you?’

  ‘He had a Pan flute in the Balkans in the 1990s. He used to play it for me.’

  ‘And?’ Knight said.

  Farrell looked uncomfortable. ‘He, Daring, was interested in me romantically. I told him I wasn’t interested, and he got angry and then obsessed. He stalked me back then. I reported him, too. In the end it didn’t matter. I was injured in a truck accident and airlifted out of Sarajevo. I haven’t seen him personally since.’

  ‘Not once in how many years?’ Knight asked.

  ‘Sixteen? Seventeen?’

  ‘And yet you suspected him?’ Pottersfield said.

  The professor’s expression turned stony. ‘I had no one else to suspect.’

  ‘I imagine not,’ the police inspector said. ‘Because he’s missing, too. Daring, I mean.’

  The confusion returned to Farrell’s face. ‘What?’

  Knight said, ‘You claim you were held in a dark room and tended by women. How did you get out?’

  The question threw Farrell for several moments, before she said, ‘Boys, but I’m not … No, I definitely remember I heard boys’ voices, and then I passed out again. When I woke up I could move my arms and legs. So I got up and found a door and …’ She hesitated and looked off into the distance. ‘I think I was in some kind of old factory. There were brick walls.’

  Pottersfield said, ‘You told the officer about a dead body without hands.’

  There was fear on the professor’s face as she looked back and forth between Knight and Pottersfield. ‘There were flies on her. Hundreds.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Farrell said, grimacing and rubbing at her head. ‘Somewhere in that factory, I think. I was dizzy. I fell a lot. I couldn’t think straight at all.’

  After a long pause, Pottersfield seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. She pulled out her mobile, got up, and took several steps away from Farrell’s hospital bed. A moment later she said, ‘It’s Pottersfield. You’re looking for an abandoned factory of some sort near the Beckton gasworks. Brick walls. There could be a body in there with no hands. Maybe more.’

  In the meantime, Knight thought of the reporting that Karen Pope had done on Farrell, and asked, ‘How did you get into that room in the factory?’

  The professor shook her head. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘What’s the last thing you do remember?’ Pottersfield said, shutting her phone.

  Farrell blinked, then tensed up and replied, ‘I can’t say.’

  Knight said, ‘Would Syren St James know?’

  The name clearly confused the professor, who asked softly, ‘Who?’

  ‘Your alter ego among the elite lesbians of London,’ Pottersfield said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re—’

  ‘—Everyone in London knows about Syren St James,’ Knight said, cutting her off. ‘She’s been in all the papers.’

  The professor looked crushed. ‘What? How?’

  ‘Karen Pope,’ Knight replied. ‘She found out about your secret life and wrote about it.’

  Farrell cried weakly, ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘Because the DNA linked you to the killings,’ Pottersfield said. ‘It still does. The DNA says that you’re involved somehow with Cronus and his Furies.’

  Farrell went hysterical, shouting: ‘I am not Cronus! I am not a Fury! I’ve had another life, but that’s no one’s business but my own. I’ve never had anything to do with any killings!’

  The attending nurse burst into the room and ordered Knight and Pottersfield out.

  ‘One more minute,’ Pottersfield insisted. ‘You were in the Candy Club the last time you were seen, two weeks ago last night, on Friday, 27 July.’

  That seemed to puzzle the professor.

  ‘Your friend Nell said she saw you there,’ Knight said. ‘She told Pope you were with a woman wearing a pill-box hat with a veil that hid her face.’

  Farrell grasped at the memory, and then nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I went with her to her car. She had wine in the car and poured me some and …’ She gazed at Pottersfield. ‘She drugged me.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Pottersfield demanded.

  Farrell, embarrassed, said, ‘Her real name? I couldn’t tell you. I assume she was like me, operating under an alias. But she told me to call her Marta. She said she was from Estonia.’

  Chapter 91

  VIOLENT THUNDERSTORMS STRUCK London late that Saturday afternoon.

  Lightning brought rain that pelted off the windscreen as Pottersfield’s unmarked police car sped towards Chelsea, its siren wailing. The inspector kept glancing furiously at Knight who looked as if he was fighting a ghost as he punched in Marta’s mobile number yet again.

  ‘Answer,’ he kept saying. ‘Answer, you bitch.’

  Pottersfield shouted: ‘How could you not have checked her out, Peter?’

  ‘I did check her out, Elaine!’ Knight shouted back. ‘You did, too! She was just so perfect for what I needed.’

  They screeched to a halt in front of Knight’s place where several other police cars were already parked, their lights flashing. Despite the rain, a crowd was gathering. Uniformed officers were already starting to put up barriers.

  Knight leaped from Pottersfield’s vehicle, feeling as if he were tottering on the edge of a dark and unfathomable abyss.

  Bella? Little Lukey? It was their birthday.

  Inspector Billy Casper met Knight at the door, his expression sombre. ‘I’m sorry, Peter. We got here too late.’

  ‘No,’ he cried, rushing inside. ‘No.’

  Everywhere Knight looked he saw the things that surrounded his children: toys, baby powder, and packages of balloons, streamers and candles. He walked numbly past it all and into the kitchen. Luke’s cereal bowl from breakfast still had milk in
it. Isabel’s blanket lay on the floor beside her high chair.

  Knight picked it up, thinking that Bella must be lost without it. The enormity of his predicament suddenly threatened to crush him. But he refused to collapse, and fought back in the only way he knew how: he kept moving.

  He found Pottersfield and said, ‘Check her flat. Her address is on her C.V. And her prints have to be everywhere in here. Can you track her mobile number?’

  ‘If she’s got it turned on,’ Pottersfield said. ‘In the meantime, call your friend Pope, and I’ll get to the media people I know. We’ll get the twins’ faces everywhere, Peter. Someone will have seen them.’

  Knight began to nod, but then said, ‘What if that’s what they want?’

  ‘What?’ Pottersfield asked. ‘Why?’

  ‘A sideshow,’ he said. ‘A diversion. Think about it. If you put their faces everywhere and tell the public that they’ve been kidnapped by a woman believed to be an associate of Cronus, law-enforcement manpower and media attention go to Isabel and Luke, leaving the Olympics open to a final attack.’

  ‘We’ve got to do something, Peter.’

  Knight couldn’t believe he was saying it, but he replied, ‘We can wait them out for a few hours at least, Elaine. See if they get nervous. See if they call. If they don’t by, say, eight, then by all means, put their faces everywhere.’

  Before Pottersfield could reply, Knight pulled out his mobile and punched in Hooligan’s number.

  Knight heard cheering in the background and Hooligan crowed: ‘Did you catch that, Peter? It’s 1-1.We’re tied!’

  ‘Come to my house,’ Knight said. ‘Now.’

  ‘Now?’ Hooligan cried, sounding a little drunk. ‘Have you gone crazy? This is for the bloody gold medal and I’ve got midfield seats.’

  ‘Cronus has my kids,’ Knight said.

  Silence, then: ‘No! Fuck. I’ll be right there, Peter. Right there.’

  Knight hung up. Elaine held out her hand for his mobile. ‘I’ll need it for a few minutes while we put on a trace.’

  He handed her the phone and went upstairs. He got Kate’s picture and brought it with him into the nursery as thunder shook the house. He sat on the couch, looked at the empty cots and the wallpaper that Kate had picked out and wondered if he had been destined for tragedy and loss.

  Then he noticed the bottle of children’s liquid anti-histamine on the changing table. He set Kate’s picture down and went over, noticing that the bottle was almost empty. At that he felt duped and enraged. Marta had been drugging his kids right under his nose.

  Pottersfield came in. She glanced at the photograph of Kate on the couch, and then handed Knight his phone. ‘You’re now linked to our system. Any call coming in to your number we should be able to trace. And I just got an alert. We found two bodies in a condemned factory contaminated with hazardous waste not far from the gasworks. Both women in their thirties. One was beaten to death within the last few hours – no ID. The other died earlier this week and was handless. We’re assuming it’s Andjela Brazlic and her older sister, Nada.’

  ‘Two Furies gone. It’s just Marta and Cronus now,’ Knight said dully, putting down the children’s cold-medicine bottle. ‘Do you think Daring could be Cronus? After what Farrell told us. The stalking in the Balkans? The flute?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Knight suddenly felt gripped by doubt, intense and claustrophobic. ‘Does it matter where I am when a call comes in?’

  ‘It shouldn’t,’ Pottersfield replied.

  He set Kate’s photograph down on the changing table and said, ‘I can’t just sit here, Elaine. I feel like I have to move. I’m going to take a walk. Is that okay?’

  ‘Just keep your mobile on.’

  ‘Tell Hooligan to call me when he gets here. And Jack Morgan should be notified. They’re at the stadium for the relays.’

  She nodded and said, ‘We’ll find them.’

  ‘I know,’ he said with wavering conviction.

  Knight put on his raincoat and left by the rear door in case the media were already camped outside. He walked down the alley, trying to decide whether to wander aimlessly or to get the car and drive back to High Beach Church to pray. But then he understood that he really had just one place to go, and only one person he wanted to see.

  Knight altered direction and trudged through the rainy city, passing pubs and hearing cheering coming from inside. It sounded as though England was winning football gold while he was losing everything that ever mattered to him.

  His hair and his trouser legs were soaking wet when he reached the door on Milner Street and rang the bell and pounded the knocker while looking up at the security camera.

  The door opened, revealing Boss. ‘She can’t be seen,’ he said sharply.

  ‘Get out of my way, little man,’ Knight said in a tone so threatening that his mother’s assistant stood aside without further protest.

  Knight opened the door of his mother’s studio without knocking. Amanda was hunched over her design table, cutting fabric. A dozen or more original new creations hung on mannequins around the room.

  His mother looked up icily. ‘Haven’t I made it abundantly clear that I wish to be left alone, Peter?’

  Walking towards her, Knight said, ‘Mother—’

  But she cut him off: ‘Leave me alone, Peter. What in God’s name are you doing here? It’s your children’s birthday. You should be with them.’

  It was the final straw. Knight felt dizzy and then blacked out.

  Chapter 92

  KAREN POPE HURRIED THROUGH the drizzling rain and the dimming light towards Knight’s house in Chelsea. She’d been tipped off by the Sun’s police reporter that something big was going on at the Private investigator’s home, and she’d gone there immediately, dialling Knight’s number constantly on the way.

  But Pope kept getting an odd beeping noise and then a voice saying that his number was ‘experiencing network difficulties’. She could see the police barrier ahead and …

  ‘Oi, Peter call you in too, then?’ Hooligan asked, trotting up beside her. His eyes were red and his breath smelled of cigarettes, garlic and beer. ‘I came from the bloody gold-medal game. I missed the winning goal!’

  ‘Missed it for what?’ she demanded. ‘Why are the police here?’

  He told her and Pope felt like crying. ‘Why? Why his kids?’

  It was the same thing she asked Pottersfield when they got inside.

  ‘Peter believes that it’s a diversionary tactic,’ the inspector said.

  Hooligan could not hide the slight slur in his voice, saying, ‘Maybe. I mean this Marta was here for the past fortnight, right?’

  ‘Give or take, I think,’ Pope said.

  ‘Right, so I’m asking myself why?’ Hooligan replied. ‘And I’m thinking Cronus sends her in as a spy. He can’t get someone inside Scotland Yard, but he can get this Marta inside Private, right?’

  ‘So?’ Pottersfield said, squinting.

  ‘Where are Peter’s computers? His phones?’

  ‘He’s got his mobile with him,’ Pottersfield said. ‘House phone is in the kitchen. I saw the computer upstairs in his room.’

  Twenty minutes later, Hooligan found Pottersfield and Pope talking with Billy Casper. ‘Thought you’d want to see this, inspector,’ he said, holding up two small evidence bags. ‘Picked up the bug on the phone and the keystroke recorders on the DSL cable. I’m betting his mobile’s bugged as well. Maybe more.’

  ‘Call him,’ Pottersfield said.

  ‘I tried,’ Hooligan said. ‘And texted him. I’m getting no answer, other than something about network difficulties.’

  Chapter 93

  DARKNESS WAS FALLING outside Amanda’s studio. Knight’s mobile lay on the coffee table. He sat on the couch, looking at the phone, his brain feeling scalded and his stomach emptier than it had ever been.

  Why hadn’t they called?

  His mother sat beside him, saying, ‘It’s more than anyone a
s good as you should have to bear, but you can’t give up hope, Peter.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Boss said emphatically. ‘Those two barbarians of yours are fighters. You have to be as well.’

  But Knight felt as beaten as he had while holding his newborns and watching his wife’s body rushed to the ambulance. ‘It’s their birthday,’ he said softly. ‘They were expecting what any three-year-old expects. Cake and ice cream and …’

  Amanda reached out and stroked her son’s hair. It was such a rare and unexpected gesture that Knight looked at her with a feeble smile on his face. ‘I know how horrid life’s been for you lately, Mother, but I wanted to thank you for caring about them. The only presents they got to open were from you.’

  She looked surprised. ‘Is that so? I didn’t think they’d get there so soon.’

  ‘I took them over,’ Boss said. ‘I thought they should be there.’

  Knight said, ‘Thank you, Boss. They loved them. And I must say, Amanda, that putting the pictures of Kate in the locket was one of the kindest and most thoughtful things you’ve ever done.’

  His mother, normally stoic, got tears in her eyes. ‘Boss and I worried because they weren’t toys.’

  ‘No, no, they loved them,’ Knight insisted. ‘Luke was wearing that watch as if it was a gold medal. And the necklace fits Isabel perfectly. I don’t think she’ll ever take it off.’

  Amanda blinked several times, and then glanced at Boss before asking, ‘You think they’re wearing them now, Peter? The watch and the necklace?’

  ‘I would assume so,’ Knight replied. ‘I didn’t see them in the house.’

  Amanda looked at Boss who was grinning. ‘Did you activate them?’

  Boss replied: ‘Even before I registered the warranties!’