Chapter 90
‘OF COURSE YOU’D heard that music before,’ Pottersfield shot back. ‘It was all over your computer. So was a program used to take control of the Olympic Stadium’s electronic billboard on the night of the opening ceremony.’
‘What?’ the professor cried, struggling to sit upright and wincing in pain. ‘No, no! Someone began sending me that music about a year ago on my phone machine and in attachments to e-mails from blind accounts. It was like I was being stalked. After a while, any time I heard it I got sick.’
‘Convenient nonsense,’ Pottersfield snapped. ‘What about the program on your computer?’
‘I don’t know what program you’re talking about. Someone must have put it on there – maybe whoever was sending me the music.’
Knight was incredulous. ‘Did you report this cyber-stalking to anyone?’
The classics professor nodded firmly. ‘Twice, as a matter of fact, at Wapping police station. But the detectives said flute music was not a crime, and I had no other proof that someone was stalking me. I said I had suspicions about who was behind the music, but they didn’t want to hear any of it. They advised me to change my phone number and my e-mail address, which I did. It stopped. And the headaches stopped, too – until you played the music again in my office.’
Knight squinted, trying to make sense of this explanation. Was it possible that Farrell had been set up as a diversion of some sort? Why hadn’t she just been killed?
Pottersfield must have been thinking along the same lines because she asked, ‘Who did you think was behind the music?’
Farrell gave a little shrug. ‘Well, I’ve only known one person in my life who plays a Pan flute.’
Knight and Pottersfield said nothing.
‘Jim Daring,’ the professor said. ‘You know, the guy at the British Museum? The one who has the television show?’
That changed things, Knight thought, remembering how Daring had spoken highly of Farrell and repeatedly told him and Pope to go and see her. Was it all part of an attempt to frame her?
Pottersfield still sounded sharply sceptical. ‘How do you know he played a Pan flute and why ever would he use the music to harass you?’
‘He had a Pan flute in the Balkans in the 1990s. He used to play it for me.’
‘And?’ Knight said.
Farrell looked uncomfortable. ‘He, Daring, was interested in me romantically. I told him I wasn’t interested, and he got angry and then obsessed. He stalked me back then. I reported him, too. In the end it didn’t matter. I was injured in a truck accident and airlifted out of Sarajevo. I haven’t seen him personally since.’
‘Not once in how many years?’ Knight asked.
‘Sixteen? Seventeen?’
‘And yet you suspected him?’ Pottersfield said.
The professor’s expression turned stony. ‘I had no one else to suspect.’
‘I imagine not,’ the police inspector said. ‘Because he’s missing, too. Daring, I mean.’
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.’