Private Games (Private 3)

The confusion returned to Farrell’s face. ‘What?’

Knight said, ‘You claim you were held in a dark room and tended by women. How did you get out?’

The question threw Farrell for several moments, before she said, ‘Boys, but I’m not … No, I definitely remember I heard boys’ voices, and then I passed out again. When I woke up I could move my arms and legs. So I got up and found a door and …’ She hesitated and looked off into the distance. ‘I think I was in some kind of old factory. There were brick walls.’

Pottersfield said, ‘You told the officer about a dead body without hands.’

There was fear on the professor’s face as she looked back and forth between Knight and Pottersfield. ‘There were flies on her. Hundreds.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know,’ Farrell said, grimacing and rubbing at her head. ‘Somewhere in that factory, I think. I was dizzy. I fell a lot. I couldn’t think straight at all.’

After a long pause, Pottersfield seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. She pulled out her mobile, got up, and took several steps away from Farrell’s hospital bed. A moment later she said, ‘It’s Pottersfield. You’re looking for an abandoned factory of some sort near the Beckton gasworks. Brick walls. There could be a body in there with no hands. Maybe more.’

In the meantime, Knight thought of the reporting that Karen Pope had done on Farrell, and asked, ‘How did you get into that room in the factory?’

The professor shook her head. ‘I don’t remember.’

‘What’s the last thing you do remember?’ Pottersfield said, shutting her phone.

Farrell blinked, then tensed up and replied, ‘I can’t say.’

Knight said, ‘Would Syren St James know?’

The name clearly confused the professor, who asked softly, ‘Who?’

‘Your alter ego among the elite lesbians of London,’ Pottersfield said.

‘I don’t know what you’re—’

‘—Everyone in London knows about Syren St James,’ Knight said, cutting her off. ‘She’s been in all the papers.’

The professor looked crushed. ‘What? How?’

‘Karen Pope,’ Knight replied. ‘She found out about your secret life and wrote about it.’

Farrell cried weakly, ‘Why would she do that?’

‘Because the DNA linked you to the killings,’ Pottersfield said. ‘It still does. The DNA says that you’re involved somehow with Cronus and his Furies.’

Farrell went hysterical, shouting: ‘I am not Cronus! I am not a Fury! I’ve had another life, but that’s no one’s business but my own. I’ve never had anything to do with any killings!’

The attending nurse burst into the room and ordered Knight and Pottersfield out.

‘One more minute,’ Pottersfield insisted. ‘You were in the Candy Club the last time you were seen, two weeks ago last night, on Friday, 27 July.’

That seemed to puzzle the professor.

‘Your friend Nell said she saw you there,’ Knight said. ‘She told Pope you were with a woman wearing a pill-box hat with a veil that hid her face.’

Farrell grasped at the memory, and then nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I went with her to her car. She had wine in the car and poured me some and …’ She gazed at Pottersfield. ‘She drugged me.’

‘Who is she?’ Pottersfield demanded.

Farrell, embarrassed, said, ‘Her real name? I couldn’t tell you. I assume she was like me, operating under an alias. But she told me to call her Marta. She said she was from Estonia.’

Chapter 91