‘He’s dangerous,’ says Marta, always the most perceptive of the three, the one whose strategic thoughts are most likely to mirror my own.
‘I agree,’ I say, before glancing at the clock on the wall and looking at her ginger-haired sister, still primping in front of the mirror. ‘It’s time to leave for the reception, Petra. I’ll see you there later. Remember the plan.’
‘I’m not stupid, Cronus,’ Petra says, glaring at me with eyes turned emerald green by contact lenses bought just for this occasion.
‘Hardly,’ I reply evenly. ‘But you have a tendency to be impetuous, to ad lib, and your task tonight demands disciplined adherence to details.’
‘I know what I have to do,’ she says coldly, and leaves.
Marta’s gaze has not left me. ‘What about Knight?’ she asks, proving once again that relentlessness is another of her more endearing qualities.
I reply, ‘Your next tasks are not until tomorrow evening. In the meantime, I’d like you both to look into Mr Knight.’
‘What are we looking for?’ Teagan asks, setting her empty glass on the table.
‘His weaknesses, sister. His vulnerabilities. Anything we can exploit.’
Chapter 28
IT WAS ALMOST eight by the time Knight reached home, a restored red-brick town house that his mother had bought for him several years before. He was as exhausted and sore as he’d ever been after a day at work: run over, shot at, forced to destroy his mother’s dreams, not to mention being grilled three times by the formidable Inspector Elaine Pottersfield.
The Metropolitan Police inspector had not been happy when she arrived at One Aldwych. Not only were there two corpses as a result of the shoot-out, she’d heard through the grapevine that the Sun had received a letter from Marshall’s killer and was incensed to learn that Private’s forensics lab had had the chance to analyse the material before Scotland Yard.
‘I should be arresting you for obstruction!’ she’d shouted.
Knight held up his hands. ‘That decision was made by our client, Karen Pope of the Sun.’
‘Who is where?’
Knight looked around. Pope had gone. ‘She was on deadline. I know they plan on turning over all evidence after they go to press.’
‘You allowed a material witness to leave the scene of a crime?’
‘I work for Private, not the court any more. And I can’t control Pope. She has her own mind.’
The Scotland Yard inspector responded by fixing Knight with a glare. ‘Seems as if I’ve heard that excuse before from you, Peter – with deadly consequences.’
Knight flushed and his throat felt heated. ‘We’re not having this conversation again. You should be asking about Guilder and Mascolo.’
Pottersfield fumed, and then said, ‘Spill it. All of it.’
Knight spilled all of it: their meetings with Daring and Farrell as well as a blow-by-blow account of what had happened in the Lobby Bar.
When he finished, the inspector said, ‘You believe Guilder’s confession?’
‘Do dying men lie?’ Knight had replied.
As he climbed the steps to his front door, Knight considered Guilder’s confession again. Then he thought of Daring and Farrell. Were they part of these killings?
Who was to say that Daring wasn’t some kind of nut behind the scenes, bent on destroying the modern games? And who was to say that Selena Farrell wasn’t the gunman in black leather and a motorcycle helmet? She’d been holding an automatic weapon in that picture in her office.
Maybe Pope’s instincts were spot on. Could the professor be Cronus? Or at least involved with him? What about Daring? Didn’t he say he’d known Farrell from somewhere in his past? The Balkans back in the 1990s?
Then another voice inside Knight demanded that he think less about villains and more about victims. How was his mother? He’d not heard from her all day.
He’d go inside. He’d call her. But before he could get his key into his front lock he heard his daughter Isabel let loose a blood-curdling cry: ‘No! No!’
Chapter 29
KNIGHT THREW OPEN the front door into the lower hallway as Isabel’s cry turned into a cutting screech: ‘No, Lukey! No!’
Her father heard a high-pitched maniacal laugh and the pattering of little feet escaping before he entered the living area of his home, which looked as though a snow tornado had whirled through it. White dust hung in the air, on the furniture, and coated his daughter, about three years old, who saw him and broke into sobs.
‘Daddy, Lukey, he … ! He …’
A dainty little girl, Isabel went into hiccupping hysterics and ran towards her daddy, who tried to bend down to comfort her. Knight gritted his teeth at the throbbing ache all down his left side, but scooped her up anyway, wanting to sneeze at the baby-powder. Isabel’s tears had left little streams of baby powder paste on her cheeks and on her eyelashes. Even covered in talc like this, she was as beautiful as her late mother, with curly fawn-coloured hair and wide cobalt-blue eyes that could cleave his heart even when they weren’t spilling tears.
‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ Knight said. ‘Daddy’s here.’
Her crying slowed to hiccups: ‘Lukey, he … he put bottom powder on me.’
‘I can see that, Bella,’ Knight said. ‘Why?’
‘Lukey thinks bottom powder is funny.’
Knight held onto his daughter with his good arm and moved towards the kitchen and the staircase that led to the upper floors. He could hear his son cackling somewhere above him as he climbed.
At the top of the stairs, Knight turned towards the nursery only to hear a woman’s voice yell, ‘Owww! You little savage!’
Knight’s son came running from the nursery in his nappy, his entire body covered in talc. He carried a bonus-sized container of baby powder and was laughing with pure joy until he caught sight of his father glaring narrowly at him.
Luke turned petrified and began to back away, waving his hands at Knight as if he were some apparition he could erase. ‘No, Daddy!’
‘Luke!’ Knight said.
Nancy, the nanny, appeared in the doorway behind his son, blocking his way, powder all over her, holding her wrist tight, her face screwed up in pain before she spotted Knight.
‘I quit,’ she said, spitting out the words like venom. ‘They’re bloody lunatics.’ She pointed at Luke, her whole arm shaking. ‘And that one’s a pant-shitting, biting little pagan! When I tried to get him on the loo, he bit me. He broke skin. I quit, and you’re paying for the doctor’s bill.’
Chapter 30
‘YOU CAN’T QUIT,’ Knight protested as the nanny dodged around Luke.
‘Watch me,’ Nancy hissed as she barged right by him and down the stairs. ‘They’ve been fed, but not bathed, and Luke’s crapped his nappy for the third time this afternoon. Good luck, Peter.’
She grabbed her things and left, slamming the door behind her.
Isabel started to sob again. ‘Nancy leaves and Lukey did it.’
Feeling overwhelmed, Knight looked at his son and shouted in anger and frustration: ‘That’s four this year, Luke! Four! And she only lasted three weeks!’
Luke’s face wrinkled. He cried: ‘Lukey sorry, Daddy. Lukey sorry.’
In seconds his son had been transformed from this force of nature capable of creating a whirlwind to a little boy so pitiful that Knight softened. Wincing against the pain in his side, still holding Isabel, he crouched down and gestured to Luke with his free arm. The toddler rushed to him and threw his arms so tight around Knight that he gasped with the ache that shot through him.