Private Games (Private 3)

They’d waited for him at his home until shortly after dawn when Pottersfield had left to examine the bodies of the two dead women found in the abandoned factory. Pope and Hooligan returned to Private to run the fingerprints that Hooligan had taken at Knight’s house through the Balkan War Crimes database.

They’d got a hit almost immediately: Senka, the oldest of the Brazlic siblings,

had been all over the place. When Hooligan informed Pottersfield, the inspector told them that preliminary fingerprint work on the more recently slain woman positively identified her as Nada, the middle Brazlic sister.

At that point, around eight a.m. that Sunday, Pope had hit a wall of exhaustion and had lain down on the couch, using one of Hooligan’s lab coats for a blanket. How long had she slept?

‘Hooligan, wake up,’ she heard Jack say. ‘There’s a beat-up Rasta at the front desk looking for you. He says he’s got something that he was supposed to hand-deliver to you for Knight. And he refuses to give it to me.’

At that Pope opened an eye to see the American standing at Hooligan’s desk and Private London’s chief scientist rousing from a nap. Above him, the clock read 10:20.

Two hours and twenty minutes? Pope sat up groggily, then got to her feet and stumbled after Hooligan and Jack out of the lab to the reception area, where a Jamaican sat painfully in a chair by the lift. A large bandage covered his grossly swollen cheek. His arm was in a cast and secured by a sling.

‘I’m Hooligan,’ the scientist said.

The Rasta struggled up and held out his good hand, saying, ‘Ketu Oladuwa. I drive de cab.’

Hooligan gestured at the cast and bandage. ‘Crash?’

Oladuwa nodded. ‘Big time, mon. On my way to Heathrow. Broadsided by a panel van. I been in hospital all night.’

Pope said, ‘What about Knight?’

‘Ya, mon,’ the Rasta said, digging in his pocket and coming up with a smashed iPhone. ‘He gimme dis one here last night and tell me to drive it to Heathrow and then back to his home to find you or some inspector with da police. I went to Knight’s home when I got out of hospital dis morning, and police told me you gone, so I came here.’

‘To give us a smashed phone?’ Jack asked.

‘Wasn’t smashed before da accident,’ the Rasta said indignantly. ‘He said something on dat phone help you find his kids.’

‘Fuck,’ Hooligan grunted. He snatched the remains of Knight’s phone from Oladuwa, spun around and took off for the lab with Pope and Jack close on his heels.

‘Hey!’ Oladuwa yelled after them. ‘Him say I get reward!’

Chapter 98

KNIGHT SURFACED FROM oblivion slowly, starting deep in the reptilian part of his brain with a sense of the smell of meat frying. At first he had no notion of who he was, or where he was, just that odour of meat frying.

Then he understood that he was lying prone on something hard. His hearing returned next, like pounding surf that cleared to static and then to voices, television voices. Knight knew who he was then, and dimly recalled being in the bedroom with his children, Marta, and Daring before it had all gone blank. He tried to move. He couldn’t. His wrists and hands were bound.

The flute began, airy and trilling, and Knight forced his eyes open, seeing blurrily that he was not in that bedroom in the white flat any more. The floor below him was hardwood, not carpeted. And the walls around him were dark-panelled and heaved to and fro like the sea churning.

Knight felt nauseated and shut his eyes, still hearing the flute music, and the broadcast announcers arguing before he moved his head and felt a terrible throbbing at the back of his skull. After several seconds he opened his eyes a second time, finding that his focus was now better. He spotted Isabel and Luke unconscious on the floor not far away, still bound and gagged.

Then he twisted his head, trying to locate the source of the music, seeing the side of a four-poster bed at the centre of the room and, on it, James Daring.

Dazed as he was, Knight understood Daring’s predicament at a glance. It was the same predicament in which he’d seen the museum curator before it had all gone to blackness: the television star lay spread-eagle on the mattress, lashed to the bedposts and wearing a hospital gown. His mouth was taped shut. An IV line ran into his wrist from a bag hanging on a rack by the bed.

The flute music stopped and Knight saw someone backlit by brilliant sunlight coming towards him across the room.

Mike Lancer carried a black combat shotgun loosely in his left hand, and a glass of orange juice in his right. He set the juice down on a table and squatted down near Knight, gazed at him in amusement, and said, ‘Awake at last. Feel like things got rearranged upstairs, did you?’ He laughed and displayed the weapon. ‘Brilliant, these old riot guns. Even air-driven, the beanbags really pack a wallop, especially if delivered to the head at close range.’

‘Cronus?’ Knight said, still hazy. He could smell alcohol on Lancer’s breath.

Lancer said, ‘You know, I had a feeling about you right from the beginning, Knight, or at least since Dan Carter’s untimely death: a premonition that you would come closest to figuring me out. But I took the necessary precautions, and here we are.’

Deeply confused, Knight said: ‘The Olympics were your life. Why?’

Lancer rested the riot gun against the inside of his knee and reached back to scratch the side of his head. As he did, Knight saw his face flush with anger. He stood up, grabbed the juice glass, and drank from it before saying, ‘The modern Games have been corrupt since the beginning. Bribed judges. Genetic freaks. Drug-fuelled monsters. It needed to be cleaned up, and I was the one to …’