The smell coming from the open storage room door is obscenely foul. But Teagan goes inside without hesitation. I glance at the iron rings on the door and the frame, unbroken, and then let my gaze travel across the floor.
The lock’s in the corner, its hasp open but not busted.
I crouch, pick it up, and loop the hasp around my middle finger like a brass knuckle, hiding the lock inside my palm. Inside, Teagan is already gloved and stuffing used IV equipment into the rubbish bag.
‘Let’s get this done,’ I say, and move towards her before squatting down to pick up a used syringe with my left hand.
Rising, feeling the urge to vengeance enfolding me like an old lover, I move the needle towards the rubbish bag as a feint before letting go with an uppercut, with the hasp leading.
Teagan never has a chance. She never sees the blow coming.
The impact crushes her larynx.
She staggers backward, choking, purple-faced, her eyes bulging right out of her head, staring at me in disbelief. The second blow breaks her nose, hurls her against the wall, and makes her understand that I am an infinitely superior being. My third strike connects with her temple and she crumples in the grime.
Chapter 90
‘OF COURSE YOU’D heard that music before,’ Pottersfield shot back. ‘It was all over your computer. So was a program used to take control of the Olympic Stadium’s electronic billboard on the night of the opening ceremony.’
‘What?’ the professor cried, struggling to sit upright and wincing in pain. ‘No, no! Someone began sending me that music about a year ago on my phone machine and in attachments to e-mails from blind accounts. It was like I was being stalked. After a while, any time I heard it I got sick.’
‘Convenient nonsense,’ Pottersfield snapped. ‘What about the program on your computer?’
‘I don’t know what program you’re talking about. Someone must have put it on there – maybe whoever was sending me the music.’
Knight was incredulous. ‘Did you report this cyber-stalking to anyone?’
The classics professor nodded firmly. ‘Twice, as a matter of fact, at Wapping police station. But the detectives said flute music was not a crime, and I had no other proof that someone was stalking me. I said I had suspicions about who was behind the music, but they didn’t want to hear any of it. They advised me to change my phone number and my e-mail address, which I did. It stopped. And the headaches stopped, too – until you played the music again in my office.’
Knight squinted, trying to make sense of this explanation. Was it possible that Farrell had been set up as a diversion of some sort? Why hadn’t she just been killed?
Pottersfield must have been thinking along the same lines because she asked, ‘Who did you think was behind the music?’
Farrell gave a little shrug. ‘Well, I’ve only known one person in my life who plays a Pan flute.’
Knight and Pottersfield said nothing.
‘Jim Daring,’ the professor said. ‘You know, the guy at the British Museum? The one who has the television show?’
That changed things, Knight thought, remembering how Daring had spoken highly of Farrell and repeatedly told him and Pope to go and see her. Was it all part of an attempt to frame her?
Pottersfield still sounded sharply sceptical. ‘How do you know he played a Pan flute and why ever would he use the music to harass you?’
‘He had a Pan flute in the Balkans in the 1990s. He used to play it for me.’
‘And?’ Knight said.
Farrell looked uncomfortable. ‘He, Daring, was interested in me romantically. I told him I wasn’t interested, and he got angry and then obsessed. He stalked me back then. I reported him, too. In the end it didn’t matter. I was injured in a truck accident and airlifted out of Sarajevo. I haven’t seen him personally since.’
‘Not once in how many years?’ Knight asked.
‘Sixteen? Seventeen?’
‘And yet you suspected him?’ Pottersfield said.
The professor’s expression turned stony. ‘I had no one else to suspect.’
‘I imagine not,’ the police inspector said. ‘Because he’s missing, too. Daring, I mean.’