‘That’s brutal,’ Knight replied.
‘It is, and it’s about to get worse,’ Jack said. ‘I have to call his wife.’
Jack hung up. Knight realised that he had not told Private’s owner that he, Knight, had lost his nanny. Better that way, he decided after several moments’ worry. The American already had too much on his plate.
He turned on the television to find the Marshall and Guilder slayings splashed all over the nightly news and cable outlets, which were luridly portraying the broader narrative as a scandalous murder-mystery, a shocking allegation about the Byzantine world behind the Olympics site-selection process, as well as a slap against London and indeed the entire UK on the eve of the Games.
Despite Guilder’s dying words to the contrary, the French in particular were said to be very unhappy with Cronus’s allegation about Olympic corruption.
Knight switched off the television and sat there in the silence. He picked up his whisky glass and drank deeply from it before looking at the framed photograph on his dresser.
Very pregnant and sublimely beautiful, his late wife Kate stood in profile on a Scottish moor lit by a June sunset. She was looking across her left shoulder, seeming to peer out from the photograph at him, radiating the joy and love that had been so cruelly taken from him almost three years before.
‘Tough day, Katie girl,’ Knight whispered. ‘I’m badly beaten up. Someone’s trying to wreck the Olympics. My mother is destroyed. And the kids have driven another nanny from the house and … I miss you. More than ever.’
He felt a familiar leadenness return to his heart and mind, which triggered a sinking sensation in his chest. He wallowed in that sensation, indeed let himself drown in it for a minute or two, and then did what he always did when he was openly grieving for Kate late at night like this.
Knight turned off the television, took his blankets and pillows and padded into the nursery. He lay down on the couch looking at the cots, smelling the smells of his children, and was at last comforted into sleep by the gentle rhythm of their breathing.
Chapter 33
Friday, 27 July 2012
THE PAINKILLERS STARTED to wear off and Knight felt the throbbing return to his right side around seven the next morning. Then he heard a squeaking noise and stirred where he lay on the couch in the twins’ nursery. He looked over and saw Isabel on her belly, eyes closed and still. But Luke’s cot was swaying gently.
His son was on his knees, chest and head on the mattress, sucking his thumbs, rocking side to side, and still asleep. Knight sat up to watch. For much
of the last two years, Luke had been doing this before waking up in the morning,
After a few minutes, Knight sneaked out of the nursery, wondering if his son’s rocking must have something to do with REM sleep. Was it disturbed? Did he have apnoea? Was that why Luke was so wild and Bella so calm? Was it what made his son’s language development delayed, and kept him from being toilet-trained when his sister was months ahead of the norm? Was that why Luke was a biter?
Knight came to no solid conclusions as he showered and shaved while listening to the radio, which was reporting that Denton Marshall’s murder and the threats from Cronus had resulted in Michael Lancer and representatives of Scotland Yard and MI5 jointly announcing a dramatic tightening of security at the opening ceremonies. Those lucky enough to have tickets were being told to try to arrive at the Olympic Park during the afternoon in order to avoid an expected crush at the security stations.
After hearing that Private would be given a role in the increased security, Knight tried to call Jack Morgan. No answer, but the American was probably going to need him soon.
He knew that his mother had promised to help, but he needed a nanny now. He got a bitterly familiar file from a drawer and opened it, seeing a list of every nanny agency in London, and began calling. The woman who’d found Nancy and the nanny before her laughed at him when he explained his plight.
‘A new nanny?’ she said. ‘Now? Not likely.’
‘Why not?’ he demanded.
‘Because your kids have a terrible reputation and the Olympics are starting tonight. Everyone I’ve got is working for at least the next two weeks.’
Knight heard the same story at the next three agencies, and his frustration began to mount. He loved his kids, but he’d vowed to find Marshall’s killer, and Private was being called on to contribute more to Olympic security. He was needed. Now.
Rather than getting angry, he decided to hope that his mother would have better luck at finding someone to care for the twins and started doing what he could from home. Remembering the DNA material he’d taken off Selena Farrell’s hairpin, he called a messenger to come and take the evidence to Private London and Hooligan.
Then he thought about Daring and Farrell, and decided that he needed to know more about them – about where their lives had crossed, anyway. Hadn’t Daring said something about the Balkans? Was that where the photo of Farrell holding the gun had been taken? It had to be.
But when Knight went online and started searching for Farrell, he came up only with references to her academic publishing, and, seven years back, her opposition to the Olympic Park.
‘This decision is flat-out wrong,’ Farrell had stated in one piece published in The Times. ‘The Olympics have become a vehicle to destroy neighbourhoods and uproot families and businesses. I pray that the people behind this decision are made to pay some day for what they’ve done to me and to my neighbours at the public’s expense.’
Made to pay, professor? Knight thought grimly. Made to pay?
Chapter 34
ALMOST TWENTY-FOUR HOURS after the flute music had triggered a brutal migraine and a violent bout of nausea, the melody still played as a cruel soundtrack to Selena Farrell’s thoughts as she lay in bed, the curtains of her bedroom drawn.