Private Games (16 page)

‘Graduate programme in speech-language pathology,’ Knight said. ‘Thanks, Elaine. I owe you.’

Hearing Luke shriek with laughter, he hung up and spotted his son and his sister running through the jungle gym with Marta in hot pursuit, playing the happy monster, laughing maniacally.

You’re not much to look at, Knight thought. But thank God for you, anyway. You’re hired.

EARLY THAT AFTERNOON
, Metropolitan Police Inspector Billy Casper eyed Knight suspiciously, and said, ‘Can’t say I think it’s proper for you to have access. But Pottersfield wanted you to see for yourself. So go on up. Second floor. Flat on the right.’

Knight mounted the stairs, fully focused on the investigation now that Marta Brezenova had come into the picture. The woman was a marvel. In less than two days she’d put his children under a spell. They were cleaner, better behaved, and happier. He’d even checked with City University. No doubt. Marta Brezenova had been accepted on their speech-language pathology programme. He hadn’t bothered to call the American University in Paris. That aspect of his life felt settled at last. He’d even called up the agency that had offered him part-time help and had cancelled his request.

Now Inspector Elaine Pottersfield was waiting for Knight at the door to Selena Farrell’s apartment.

‘Anything?’ he asked.

‘A lot, actually,’ she said. After he’d put on gloves and slipons she led him inside. A full crime-scene unit from Scotland Yard and specialists from MI5 were tearing the place apart.

They went into the professor’s bedroom, which was dominated by an oversized dressing table that featured three mirrors and several drawers open to reveal all manner of beauty items: twenty different kinds of lipstick, an equal number of nail-polish bottles, and jars of make-up.

Dr Farrell? It didn’t fit with the professor whom Knight and Pope had met in the office. Then he looked around and spotted the open closets, which were stuffed with what looked like high-end expensive women’s clothing.

Was she a secret fashionista or something?

Before Knight could express his confusion, Pottersfield gestured past a crime tech examining a laptop on the dressing table towards a filing cabinet in the corner. ‘We found all sorts of written diatribes against the destruction the Games caused in East London, including several poisonous letters to Denton—’

‘Inspector?’ the crime tech interrupted excitedly. ‘I think I’ve got it!’

Pottersfield frowned. ‘What?’

The tech struck the keyboard and from the computer flute music began to play, the same haunting melody that had echoed inside the Olympic Stadium on the night Paul Teeter was poisoned, the same brutal tune that had accompanied Cronus’s letter accusing him of using an illicit performance-enhancing substance.

‘That’s on the computer?’ Knight asked.

‘Part of a simple
.exe
file designed to play the music and to display this.’

The tech turned the screen to show three words centred horizontally:

OLYMPIC SHAME EXPOSED

WEARING A SURGICAL
hair-cap and mask, a long rubber apron and the sort of high-sleeved rubber gloves that butchers use to disembowel cattle, I carefully load the third letter into an envelope addressed to Karen Pope.

More than sixty hours have passed since we slew the monster Teeter, and the initial frenzy that we caused in the global media has subsided considerably because the London Games have gone on, and gold medals have been won.

On Saturday we dominated virtually every broadcast and every written account of the opening ceremonies. On Sunday, the stories about the threat we posed were shorter and focused on law-enforcement efforts to figure out how the Olympic computer system was hacked, as well as insignificant coverage of the impromptu memorial service that the US athletes held for the corrupt swine Teeter.

Yesterday we were merely context for news features that trumpeted the fact that, apart from Teeter’s murder, the 2012 Summer Olympics were going off flawlessly. This morning
we
didn’t even make page one, which was dominated by the search of Serena Farrell’s home and office where conclusive evidence had been found linking her to the Cronus murders; and by reports that Scotland Yard and MI5 had launched a nationwide manhunt for the classics professor.

This is troubling news at some level, but not unexpected. Nor is the fact that it will take more than a death or two to destroy the modern Olympic movement. I’ve known that ever since the night when London won the right to host the Games. My sisters and I have had seven years since to work out our intricate plan for vengeance, seven years to penetrate the system and use it to our advantage, seven years to create enough false leads to keep the police distracted and uncertain, unable to anticipate our final purpose until it’s much too late.

Still wearing the apron and gloves, I slip the envelope into a plastic Ziploc bag and hand it to Petra, who stands with Teagan, both sisters clad in disguises that render them fat and unrecognisable to anyone but me or their older sister.

‘Remember the tides,’ I say.

Petra says nothing and looks away from me, as if she is having an internal argument of some sort. The act creates unease in me.

‘We will, Cronus,’ Teagan says, sliding on dark sunglasses below the official Olympic Volunteer cap she wears.

I go to Petra and say, ‘Are you all right, sister?’

Her expression is conflicted, but she nods.

I kiss her on both cheeks, and then turn to Teagan.

‘The factory?’ I ask.

‘This morning,’ she replies. ‘Food and medicine enough for four days.’

I embrace her and whisper in her ear: ‘Watch your sister. She’s impulsive.’

When we part, Teagan’s face is expressionless. My cold warrior.

Removing the apron and gloves, I watch the sisters leave, and my hand travels to that crablike scar on the back of my head. Scratching it, the hatred ignites almost instantly, and I deeply wish that I could be one of those two women tonight. But, in consolation, I remind myself that the ultimate revenge will be mine and mine alone. The disposable mobile in my pocket rings. It’s Marta.

‘I managed to put a bug in Knight’s mobile before he left for work,’ she informs me. ‘I’ll tap the home computer when the children sleep.’

‘Did he give you the evening off?’

‘I didn’t ask for it,’ Marta says.

If the stupid bitch were in front of me right now, I swear I’d wring her pretty little neck. ‘What do you mean, you didn’t ask?’ I demand in a tight voice.

‘Relax,’ she says. ‘I’ll be right where I’m needed when I’m needed. The children will be asleep. They’ll never even know I was gone. And neither will Knight. He told me not to expect him until almost midnight.’

‘How can you be sure the brats will be sleeping?’

‘How else would I do it? I’m going to drug them.’

SEVERAL HOURS LATER
, inside the Aquatics Centre in the grounds of the Olympic Park, US diver Hunter Pierce flipped backwards off the ten-metre platform. She spun through the chlorine-tainted air, corkscrewing twice before slicing the water with a cutting sound, leaving a shallow whirlpool on the surface and little else.

Knight joined the packed house, cheering, clapping and whistling. But no one in the crowd celebrated more than the American diver’s three children – one boy and two girls – in the front row, stamping their feet and waving their hands at their mother as she surfaced, grinning wildly.

That was Pierce’s fourth attempt, and her best in Knight’s estimation. After three dives she had been in third place behind athletes from South Korea and Panama. The Chinese were a surprisingly distant fourth and fifth.

She’s in the zone, Knight thought. She feels it.

As he’d been for much of the past two hours, Knight was standing in the exit gangway opposite the ten-metre platform, watching the crowd and the competition. Nearly four days had passed since Teeter’s death, four days without subsequent
attack
, and one day since the discovery of the software program in Selena Farrell’s computer designed to breach and take over the Olympic Stadium’s electronic scoreboard system.

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.’

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