‘Elaine,’ Knight said.
‘Not exactly my idea to let you into the crime scene.’
‘No, I imagine not,’ replied Knight, fighting to control his emotions, which were heating up by the second. Pottersfield always seemed to have that effect on him. ‘But here we are. What can you tell me?’
The inspector did not reply for several moments, then finally said, ‘The maid found him an hour ago out in the garden. Or what’s left of him, anyway.’
Thinking of Marshall, the learned and funny man he’d come to know and admire over the past two years, Knight felt dizzy and he had to put his vinyl-gloved hand on the counter to steady himself. ‘What’s left of him?’
Pottersfield gestured grimly at the open French window.
Knight absolutely did not want to go out into the garden. He wanted to remember Marshall as he’d been the last time he’d seen him, two weeks before, with his shock of startling white hair, scrubbed pink skin, and easy, infectious laugh.
‘I’ll understand if you’d rather not,’ Pottersfield said. ‘Inspector Casper said your mother was engaged to Marshall. When did that happen?’
‘Last New Year,’ Knight said. He swallowed, and moved towards the door, adding bitterly: ‘They were to be married on Christmas Eve. Another tragedy. Just what I need in my life, isn’t it?’
Pottersfield’s expression twisted in pain and anger, and she looked at the kitchen floor as Knight went past her and out into the garden.
The air in the garden was motionless, growing hotter, and stank of death and gore. On the flagstone terrace, about five litres of blood, the entire reservoir of Sir Denton Marshall’s life, had run out and congealed around his decapitated corpse.
‘The medical examiner thinks the job was done with a long curved blade that had a serrated edge,’ Pottersfield said.
Knight once more fought off the urge to vomit and tried to take in the entire scene, to burn it into his mind as if it were a series of photographs and not reality. Keeping everything at arm’s length was the only way he knew how to get through something like this.
Pottersfield said: ‘And if you look closely, you’ll see that some of the blood’s been sprayed back toward the body with water from the garden hose. I’d expect the killer did it to wash away footprints and so forth.’
Knight nodded. Then, by sheer force of will, he moved his attention beyond the body, deeper into the garden, bypassing forensics techs gathering evidence from the flower beds, to a crime-scene photographer snapping away near the back wall.
Knight skirted the corpse by several feet and from that new perspective saw what the photographer was focusing on. It was ancient Greek and one of Marshall’s prized possessions: a headless limestone statue of an Athenian senator cradling a book and holding the hilt of a broken sword.
Marshall’s head had been placed in the empty space between the statue’s shoulders. His face was puffy, lax. His mouth was twisted to the left as if he were spitting. And his eyes were open, dull, and, to Knight, shockingly forlorn.
For an instant, the Private operative wanted to break down. But then he felt himself filled with a sense of outrage. What kind of barbarian would do such a thing? And why? What possible reason could there be to behead Denton Marshall? The man was more than good. He was …
‘You’re not seeing it all, Peter,’ Pottersfield said behind him. ‘Take a look at the grass over there.’
Knight clenched his hands into fists and walked off the terrace onto the grass, which scratched against the paper slipons he wore over his shoes. Then he saw what Pottersfield had indicated and stopped cold.
Five interlocking rings – the symbol of the Olympic Games – had been spray-painted on the grass in front of the statue.
Across the symbol, partially obscuring it, an X had been smeared in blood.
Chapter 3
WHERE ARE THE eggs of monsters most likely to be laid? What nest incubates them until they hatch? What are the toxic scraps that nourish them to adulthood?
So often during the headaches that irregularly rip through my mind like gale-driven thunder and lightning I ponder those kinds of questions, and others.
Indeed, as you read this, you might be asking your own questions, such as ‘Who are you?’
My real name is irrelevant. For the sake of this story, however, you can call me Cronus. In old, old Greek myths, Cronus was the most powerful of the Titans, a digester of universes, and the Lord God of Time.
Do I think I am a god?
Don’t be absurd. Such arrogance tempts fate. Such hubris mocks the gods. And I have never been guilty of that treacherous sin.
I remain, however, one of those rare beings to appear on Earth once a generation or two. How else would you explain the fact that, long before the storms began in my head, hatred was my oldest memory and wanting to kill was my very first desire?