Chapter 26
A FEW MINUTES later, Knight stood on the pavement outside One Aldwych, oblivious to patrons hurrying past him to the restaurants and theatres. He was transfixed by the sight and sound of the wailing ambulance speeding Guilder and Mascolo to the nearest hospital.
He remembered standing on another pavement late at night almost three years before, watching a different ambulance race away from him, its siren’s fading cry accompanying a feeling of misery that still had not lifted entirely for him.
‘Knight?’ Pope said. She’d come up behind him.
He blinked and noticed the double-decker buses braking and taxis honking and people hurrying home all around him. Suddenly he felt disjointed in much the same way that he had on that long-ago night when he’d watched the other ambulance speed away from him.
London goes on, he thought. London always went on even in the face of tragedy and death, whether the victim was a corrupt hedge fund manager or a bodyguard or a young—
A pair of fingers appeared in front of his nose. They clicked and he looked round, startled. Karen Pope was looking at him in annoyance. ‘Earth to Knight. Hello?’
‘What is it?’ he snapped.
‘I asked you if you think Guilder will make it?’
Knight shook his head. ‘No. I felt his spirit leave him.’
The reporter looked at him sceptically. ‘What do you mean, you felt it?’
Knight sighed softly before replying: ‘That’s the second time in my life I’ve had someone die in my arms, Pope. I felt it the first time, too. That ambulance might as well slow down. Guilder is as dead as Mascolo is.’
Pope’s shoulders sank a little and there was a brief awkward silence before she said, ‘I’d better be going back to the office. I’ve got a nine o’clock deadline.’
‘You should include in your story that Guilder confessed to the currency fraud just before he died,’ Knight said.
‘He did?’ Pope said, digging in her pocket for her notebook. ‘What’d he say, exactly?’
‘He said that the scam was his, and that the money did not go to any member of the Olympic Site Selection committee. It went to his personal offshore accounts. Marshall was innocent. He died a victim of Guilder’s scheming.’
Pope stopped writing, her scepticism back. ‘I don’t buy that,’ she said. ‘He’s covering for Marshall.’
‘They were his last words,’ Knight shot back. ‘I believe him.’
‘You have a reason to, don’t you? It clears your mother’s late fiancé.’
‘It’s what he said,’ Knight insisted. ‘You have to include that in the story.’
‘I’ll let the facts speak for themselves,’ Pope said, ‘including what you say Guilder told you.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve got to get going.’
‘We’re not going anywhere soon,’ Knight said, feeling suddenly exhausted. ‘Scotland Yard will want to talk with us, especially because there was gunfire. Meanwhile, I need to call Jack and fill him in, and then speak to my nanny.’
‘Nanny?’ Pope said, looking surprised. ‘You have kids?’
‘Twins. Boy and girl.’
Pope glanced at his left hand and said in a joking manner, ‘No ring. What, are you divorced? Drove your wife nuts and she left you with the brats?’
Knight gazed at her coldly, marvelling at her insensitivity, before saying, ‘I’m a widower, Pope. My wife died in childbirth. She bled to death in my arms two years, eleven months and two weeks ago. They took her away in an ambulance with the siren wailing just like that.’
Pope’s jaw sagged and she looked horrified. ‘Peter, I’m so sorry, I …’
But Knight already had his back turned and was walking along the pavement towards Inspector Elaine Pottersfield, who’d only just arrived.