Private Games (Private 3)

How was it possible? And what did Knight and Pope think of her? She had all but given them a reason to suspect her of something when she’d fled the scene like that. What if they started digging?

For what seemed like the thousandth time since bolting from her office and fleeing home to her tidy little flat in Wapping, Farrell swallowed hard against a burning in her throat that would not leave her. She’d drunk water all afternoon, and taken a handful of antacid tablets. They had only helped a bit.

She’d been dealing with migraines since she was a child, however, and a prescription medicine had blunted the agony of the electric head-clamp, leaving a dull aching at the back of her skull.

Farrell tried to fight the urge to ease that feeling. Not only was it a bad idea, given the medicine she was on, but when she drank alcohol she tended to become another personality, an almost completely different one.

I’m not going there tonight, she thought before the image of an exotic woman sitting deep in the corner of a pink tufted couch flashed into her head. At that, the decision was made for her. Farrell got out of bed, padded to the kitchen, opened the freezer and took out a bottle of Grey Goose vodka.

Soon the classics professor was on her second Martini, the ache at the back of her head was gone, and she believed she’d erased the memory of the flute melody. It was a syrinx melody, actually. The syrinx or Pan pipes featured seven reeds bound side by side. Along with the lyre, the Pan pipes were one of the oldest musical instruments in the world. But their eerie, breathy tonality had been banned from the ancient Olympics because it sounded too funereal.

‘Who cares?’ Farrell grumbled, and then gulped at her drink. ‘To hell with the Olympics. To hell with Denton Marshall. To hell with the lot of them.’

Buzzing on the vodka now, becoming another person, Farrell vowed that with the migraine behind her she wasn’t going to dwell on loss or injustice, or oppression. It was Friday night in London. She had places to go. People to see.

The professor felt a thrill go through her that deepened into a hunger when she swayed down the hall, went into her bedroom closet and unzipped a garment bag hanging there.

Inside was a dramatic hip-hugging A-line black skirt slit provocatively up its right flank, and a sexy sleeveless maroon satin blouse designed to show plenty of abundant cleavage.

Chapter 35

AT FIVE O’CLOCK that Friday afternoon, Knight was in his kitchen making the twins dinner, resigned to the fact that he would not witness the opening ceremony of the Games live and in person.

Knight felt spent, anyway. All day long, from the moment Luke had awoken crying, he had been consumed by the needs of his children, his frustration with the nanny issue, and his inability to push the Cronus investigation forward.

Around noon, while the twins were playing, he had called his mother and asked her how she was holding up.

‘I slept two hours,’ she replied. ‘I’d nod off and all I could see in my dreams was Denton, and every time I’d feel such joy that I’d wake up and then face heartbreak all over again.’

‘God, how horrible, mother,’ said Knight, remembering the insomnia and anguish he’d suffered in the immediate weeks after the birth of the twins and Kate’s death. Many nights he’d thought he was going crazy.

He thought to change the conversation. ‘I forgot to tell you: Mike Lancer invited me as his guest to sit in the organising committee’s box for the opening ceremonies. If you find me a nanny, we can go together.’

‘I don’t know if I’m ready for that volume of pity quite yet. Besides, no memorial service has been planned. It would be unseemly for me to look as if I’m celebrating.’

‘The Olympics are part of Denton’s legacy,’ Knight reminded her. ‘You’d be honouring him. Besides, it would do you good to get out of the house and help me defend Denton’s reputation to one and all.’

‘I’ll consider it.’

‘And by the way: no nanny, no work on Denton’s murder investigation.’

‘I’m not a nincompoop, Peter!’ his mother snapped.

Then Amanda Knight hung up on her son.

Around three, when the children were napping, Knight reached Jack Morgan. Private’s owner was usually laid back and very cool, but even over the phone Knight could sense the pressure that Jack was under.

‘We’re doing everything we can to find a nanny,’ Knight said.

‘Good,’ Jack said. ‘Because we need you.’

‘Bollocks,’ Knight fumed after he’d hung up.

His doorbell rang at around five-thirty. Knight looked through the security peephole and saw his mother in stylish black slacks, shoes and blouse, grey pearl necklace and earrings. Dark sunglasses. He opened the door.

‘I arrange

d a nanny for the evening,’ Amanda said, and then stepped aside to reveal a very unhappy Gary Boss, resplendent in pedal-pusher khaki trousers, argyle socks, loafers, and a bow tie with barber-pole stripes.