Private Games (10 page)

It heats in my gut as I turn to my sisters. We’re in my office. It’s the first chance the four of us have had to talk face to face in days, and I take the three of them in at a glance.

Blonde and cool Teagan is removing the scarf, hat and sunglasses she wore while driving the taxi earlier in the day. Marta, ebony-haired and calculating, sets her motorcycle helmet on the floor beside her pistol and unzips her leathers. Pretty Petra is the youngest, the most attractive, the best actor and therefore the most impulsive. She looks in the mirror on the closet door, checking the fit of a chic grey cocktail dress and the dramatic styling of her short ginger hair.

Seeing the sisters like this, they’re each so familiar to me that it’s hard to imagine a time when we weren’t all together, establishing and projecting our own busy lives, while staying completely unaligned in public.

And why wouldn’t they still be with me after seventeen years?
In absentia
in 1997, a tribunal in The Hague indicted them for executing more than sixty Bosnians. Ever since Ratko Mladic – the general who oversaw the Serbian kill squads in Bosnia – was arrested last year, the hunt for my Furies has intensified.

I know. I keep track of such things. My dreams depend on it.

In any case, the sisters have lived under the threat of discovery for so long that it pervades their DNA, but that constant cellular-level menace has made them all the more fanatically devoted to me, mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. Indeed, ever so gradually over the years, my dreams of vengeance have become theirs, along with a desire to see those dreams realised that burns almost as incandescently as my own.

Over the years, in addition to protecting them, I’ve educated them, paid for minor plastic surgery, and trained them to be expert marksmen, hand-to-hand fighters, con artists and thieves. These last two skills have paid me back tenfold on my investment, but that is another story altogether. Suffice it to say that, to the best of my knowledge, they are the best at shadow games, superior to anyone save me.

Now the jaded might be wondering whether I am similar to Charles Manson back in the 1970s, an insane prophet who rescued traumatised women and convinced them that they were apostles sent to Earth for homicidal missions designed to trigger Armageddon. But comparing me to Manson and the Furies to the Helter-Skelter girls is deeply misguided, like trying to compare a true story to a myth of heaven. We are more powerful, transcendent and deadly than Manson could ever have imagined in his wildest drug-induced nightmares.

Teagan pours a glass of vodka, gulps it down, and says, ‘I could not have anticipated that man jumping in front of my cab.’

‘Peter Knight – he works for Private London,’ I say, and then push across the coffee table a photograph that I found on the Internet. In it Knight stands, drink in hand, beside his mother at the launch of her most recent fashion line.

Teagan considers the photograph and then nods. ‘That’s him. I got a good look when his face smashed against my windscreen.’

Marta frowns, picks up the photograph, studies it, and then trains her dark agate eyes on me. ‘He was with Guilder too, just now, in the bar, before I shot. I’m sure of it. He shot at me after I killed the one guarding Guilder too.’

I raise an eyebrow. Private? Knight? They’ve almost foiled my plans twice today. Is that fate, coincidence, or a warning?

‘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.’

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!’

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.’

‘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.

‘Lukey love you, Daddy,’ his son said.

Despite the stench that hung around the boy, Knight blew the talc off Luke’s cheeks and kissed him. ‘Daddy loves you too, son.’ Then he kissed Isabel so hard on the cheek that she laughed.

‘A change and a shower is in order for Luke,’ he said, and put both his children down. ‘Isabel, shower too.’

A few minutes later, after dealing with the soiled nappy, they were in the big stall shower in Knight’s master bath, splashing and playing. Knight got out his mobile just as Luke picked up a sponge cricket bat and whacked his sister over the head with it.

‘Daddy!’ Isabel complained.

‘Clonk him back,’ Knight said.

He glanced at the clock. It was past eight. None of the nanny services he’d used in the past would be open. He punched in his mother’s number.

She answered on the third ring, sounding wrung-out, ‘Peter, tell me it’s just a nightmare and that I’ll wake up soon.’

‘I’m so sorry, Amanda.’

She broke down in muffled sobs for several moments, and then said, ‘I’m feeling worse than I did when your father died. I think I’m feeling as you must have with Kate.’

Knight felt stinging tears well in his eyes, and a dreadful hollowness in his chest. ‘And still often do, Mother.’

He heard her blow her nose, and then say: ‘Tell me what you know, what you’ve found out.’

Knight knew his mother would not rest until he’d told her, so he did, rapidly and in broad strokes. She’d gasped and protested violently when he’d described Cronus’s letter and the accusations regarding Marshall, and now she wept when he told her of Guilder’s confession and his exoneration of her late fiancé.

‘I knew it couldn’t be true,’ Knight said. ‘Denton was an honest man, a great man with an even greater heart.’

‘He was,’ his mother said, choking.

‘Everywhere I went today, people talked about his generosity and spirit.’

‘Tell me,’ Amanda said. ‘Please, Peter, I need to hear these things.’

Knight told her about Michael Lancer’s despair over Marshall’s death and how he’d called the financier a mentor, a friend, and one of the guiding visionaries behind the London Olympics.