Indeed, at some point in my second year of life I became aware of hatred, as if it and I were linked spirits cast into an infant’s body from somewhere out there in the void. And for some time that was what I thought of as me: this burning singularity of loathing thrown on the floor in a corner, in a box filled with rags.
Then one day I began instinctively to crawl from the box, and within that movement and the freedom I gained thereby I soon understood that I was more than anger, that I was a being unto myself, that I starved and went thirsty for days, that I was cold and naked and left to myself for hours on end, rarely cleaned, rarely held by the monsters that walked all around me as if I were some kind of alien creature landed among them. That was when my first direct thought occurred: I want to kill them all.
I had that ruthless urge long, long before I understood that my parents were drug addicts, crackheads, unfit to raise a superior being such as me.
When I was four, shortly after I sunk a kitchen knife into my comatose mother’s thigh, a woman came to where we lived in squalor and she took me away from my parents for good. They put me in a home where I was forced to live with abandoned little monsters, hateful and distrustful of any other beings but themselves.
Soon enough I grasped that I was smarter, stronger, and more visionary than any of them. By the age of nine I did not know exactly what I was yet, but I sensed that I might be some sort of different species – a super-creature, if you will – who could manipulate, conquer, or slay every monster in his path.
I knew this about myself for certain after the storms started in my head.
They started when I was ten. My foster-father, whom we called ‘Minister Bob’, was whipping one of the little, little monsters, and I could not stand to hear it. The crying made me feel weak and I could not abide that sensation. So I left the house and climbed the back fence and wandered through some of the worst streets in London until I found quiet and comfort in the familiar poverty of an abandoned building.
Two monsters were inside already. They were older than me, in their teens, and they were members of a street gang. They were high on something, I could tell that about them right away; and they said I’d wandered onto their turf.
>
I tried to use my speed to get away, but one of them threw a rock that clipped my jaw. It dazed me and I fell, and they laughed and got angrier. They threw more stones that cracked my ribs and broke blood vessels in my thigh.
Then I felt a hard blow above my left ear, followed by a Technicolor explosion that crackled through my brain like lightning bolts ripping through a summer sky.
Chapter 4
PETER KNIGHT FELT HELPLESS as he glanced back and forth, from the Olympic symbol crossed out in blood to the head of his mother’s fiancé.
Inspector Pottersfield stepped up beside Knight. In a thin voice, she said, ‘Tell me about Marshall.’
Choking back his grief, Knight said, ‘Denton was a great, great man, Elaine. Ran a big hedge fund, made loads of money, but gave most of it away. He was also an absolutely critical member of the London Organising Committee. A lot of people think that without Marshall’s efforts, we never would have beaten Paris in our bid for the Games. He was also a nice guy, very modest about his achievements. And he made my mother very happy.’
‘I didn’t think that was possible,’ Pottersfield remarked.
‘Neither did I. Neither did Amanda. But he did,’ Knight said. ‘Until just now, I didn’t think Denton Marshall had an enemy in the world.’
Pottersfield gestured at the bloody Olympic symbol. ‘Maybe it has more to do with the Olympics than who he was in the rest of his life.’
Knight stared at Sir Denton Marshall’s head and returned his gaze to the corpse before saying, ‘Maybe. Or maybe this is just designed to throw us off track. Cutting off someone’s head can easily be construed as an act of rage, which is almost always personal at some level.’
‘You’re saying this could be revenge of some kind?’ Pottersfield replied.
Knight shrugged. ‘Or a political statement. Or the work of a deranged mind. Or a combination of the three. I don’t know.’
‘Can you account for your mother’s whereabouts last evening between eleven and twelve-thirty?’ Pottersfield asked suddenly.
Knight looked at her as if she was an idiot. ‘Amanda loved Denton.’
‘Spurned love can be a powerful motive to rage,’ Pottersfield observed.
‘There was no spurning,’ Knight snapped. ‘I would have known. Besides, you’ve seen my mother. She’s five foot five and weighs just under eight stone. Denton weighed nearly sixteen. There’s no way she’d have had the physical or emotional strength to cut off his head. And she had no reason to.’
‘So you’re saying you do know where she was?’ Pottersfield asked.
‘I’ll find out and get back to you about it. But first I have to tell her.’
‘I’ll do that if you think it might help.’
‘No, I’ll do it,’ Knight said, studying Marshall’s head one last time and then focusing on the way his mouth seemed twisted as if he’d been trying to spit something out.
Knight fished in his pocket for a pen-sized torch, stepped around the Olympic symbol and directed the beam into the gap between Marshall’s lips. He saw a glint of something, and reached back into his pocket for a pair of forceps that he always kept there in case he wanted to pick something up without touching it.