‘Knight?’ a man’s voice called to him. ‘Is that you?’
Knight looked up to see a tall, athletic man – mid-forties and wearing a fine Italian suit – rushing towards him. Below his thick salt-and-pepper hair, anguish twisted his ruddy, square face.
Knight had met Michael ‘Mike’ Lancer at Private London’s offices twice in the eighteen months since the company had been hired to act as a special security detail during the Olympic Games. But he knew the man largely by his reputation.
A two-time world decathlon champion in the 1980s and 1990s, Lancer had served with and in the Queen’s Guard, which had allowed him to train full-time. At the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 he had led the decathlon after the first day of competition but had then cramped in the heat and humidity during the second day, finishing outside the top ten finishers.
Lancer had since become a motivational speaker and security consultant who often worked with Private International on big projects. He was also a member of LOCOG, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, and had been charged with helping to organise security for the mega-event.
‘Is it true?’ Lancer asked in a distraught voice. ‘Denton’s dead?’
‘Afraid so, Mike,’ Knight said.
Lancer’s eyes welled with tears. ‘Who would do this? Why?’
‘Looks like someone who hates the Olympics,’ Knight said. Then he described the manner of Marshall’s death, and the bloody X.
Rattled, Lancer said, ‘When do they think this happened?’
‘Shortly before midnight,’ Knight replied.
Lancer shook his head. ‘That means I saw him only two hours before his death. He was leaving the party at Tate Britain with …’ He stopped and looked at Knight in sad reappraisal.
‘Probably with my mother,’ Knight said. ‘They were engaged.’
‘Yes, I knew that you and she are related,’ Lancer said. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Peter. Does Amanda know?’
‘I’m on my way to tell her right now.’
‘You poor bastard,’ Lancer said. Then he looked off towards the police barrier. ‘Are those reporters there?’
‘A whole pack of them, and getting bigger,’ Knight said.
Lancer shook his head bitterly. ‘With all due loving respect to Denton, this is all we need with the opening ceremony tomorrow night. They’ll blast the lurid details all over the bloody world.’
‘Nothing you can do to stop that,’ Knight said. ‘But I might think about upping security on all members of the organising committee.’
Lancer made a puffing noise, and then nodded. ‘You’re right. I’d best catch a cab back to the office. Marcus is going to want to hear this in person.’
Marcus Morris, a politician who had stood down at the last election, was now chairman of the London Organising Committee.
‘My mother as well,’ Knight said and together they headed on towards Chesham Street where they thought there’d be more taxis.
Indeed, they’d just reached Chesham Street when a black cab appeared from the south across from the Diplomat Hotel. At the same time, farther away and from the north, a red cab came down the near lane. Knight hailed it.
Lancer signalled the taxi in the northbound lane, saying, ‘Give my condolences to your mother, and tell Jack I’ll be in touch sometime later today.’
Jack Morgan was the American owner of Private International. He’d been in town since the plane carrying five members of the London office had gone down in the North Sea with no survivors.
Lancer stepped off the kerb, and set off in a confident stride heading diagonally across the street while the red cab came closer.
But then, to Knight’s horror, he heard the growl of an engine and the squeal of tyres.
The black cab was accelerating, heading right at the LOCOG member.
Chapter 7
KNIGHT REACTED ON instinct. He leaped into the street and knocked Lancer from the cab’s path.
In the next instant, Knight sensed the black cab’s bumper less than a metre away and tried to jump in the air to avoid being hit. His feet left the ground but could not propel him out of the cab’s path. The bumper and radiator grille struck the side of his left knee and lower leg and drove on through.
The blow spun Knight into the air. His shoulders, chest and hip smashed down on the vehicle’s bonnet and his face was jammed against the windscreen. He glimpsed a split-second image of the driver. Scarf. Sunglasses. A woman?
Knight was hurled up and over the cab’s roof as if he were no more than a stuffed doll. He hit the road hard on his left side, knocking the wind out of him, and for a moment he was aware only of the sight of the black cab speeding away, the smell of car exhaust, and the blood pounding in his temples.
Then he thought: A bloody miracle, but nothing feels broken.
The red taxi screeched towards Knight and he panicked, thinking he’d be run over after all.
But it skidded into a U-turn before stopping. The driver, an old Rasta wearing a green and gold knitted cap over his dreadlocks threw open his door and jumped out.
‘Don’t move, Knight!’ Lancer yelled, running up to him. ‘You’re hurt!’
‘I’m okay,’ Knight croaked. ‘Follow that cab, Mike.’
Lancer hesitated, but Knight said, ‘She’s getting away!’
Lancer grabbed Knight under the arms and hoisted him into the back of the red cab. ‘Follow it!’ Lancer roared at the driver.
Knight held his ribs, still struggling for air as the Rasta driver took off after the black cab, which was well ahead of them by now, turning hard west along Pont Street.
‘I catch her, mon!’ the driver promised. ‘Dat crazy one tried to kill you!’
Lancer was looking back and forth between the road ahead and Knight. ‘You sure you’re okay?’
‘Banged and bruised,’ Knight grunted. ‘And she wasn’t trying to run me down, Mike. She was trying to run you down.’
The driver power-drifted into Pont Street, heading west. The black cab was closer now, its brake lights flashing red before it lurched in a hard right turn into Sloane Street.
The Rasta mashed the accelerator hard. They reached the intersection with Sloane Street so fast that Knight felt sure they’d actually catch up with the woman who’d just tried to kill him.
But then two more black cabs flashed past them, both heading north on Sloane Street, and the Rasta was forced to slam on his brakes and wrench the wheel so as not to hit them. Their cab went into a screeching skid and almost hit another car: a Metropolitan Police vehicle.
Its siren went on. So did its flashing lights.
‘No!’ Lancer yelled.
‘Every time, mon!’ the driver shouted in equal frustration as he slowed his vehicle to a stop.
Knight nodded, dazed and angry, staring through the windscreen as the taxi that had almost killed him melted into the traffic heading towards Hyde Park.
Chapter 8
BRIGHTLY FLETCHED ARROWS whizzed and cut through the hot mid-morning air. They struck in and around yellow bullseyes painted on large red and blue targets set up in a long line that stretched across the lime-green pitch at Lord’s Cricket Ground near Regent’s Park in central London.
Archers from six or seven countries were completing their final appointed practice rounds. Archery would be one of the first sports to be decided after the 2012 London Olympic Games opened, with competition scheduled to start mid-morning on Saturday, two days hence, with the medal ceremony to be held that very afternoon.