Chapter 91
VIOLENT THUNDERSTORMS STRUCK London late that Saturday afternoon.
Lightning brought rain that pelted off the windscreen as Pottersfield’s unmarked police car sped towards Chelsea, its siren wailing. The inspector kept glancing furiously at Knight who looked as if he was fighting a ghost as he punched in Marta’s mobile number yet again.
‘Answer,’ he kept saying. ‘Answer, you bitch.’
Pottersfield shouted: ‘How could you not have checked her out, Peter?’
‘I did check her out, Elaine!’ Knight shouted back. ‘You did, too! She was just so perfect for what I needed.’
They screeched to a halt in front of Knight’s place where several other police cars were already parked, their lights flashing. Despite the rain, a crowd was gathering. Uniformed officers were already starting to put up barriers.
Knight leaped from Pottersfield’s vehicle, feeling as if he were tottering on the edge of a dark and unfathomable abyss.
Bella? Little Lukey? It was their birthday.
Inspector Billy Casper met Knight at the door, his expression sombre. ‘I’m sorry, Peter. We got here too late.’
‘No,’ he cried, rushing inside. ‘No.’
Everywhere Knight looked he saw the things that surrounded his children: toys, baby powder, and packages of balloons, streamers and candles. He walked numbly past it all and into the kitchen. Luke’s cereal bowl from breakfast still had milk in it. Isabel’s blanket lay on the floor beside her high chair.
Knight picked it up, thinking that Bella must be lost without it. The enormity of his predicament suddenly threatened to crush him. But he refused to collapse, and fought back in the only way he knew how: he kept moving.
He found Pottersfield and said, ‘Check her flat. Her address is on her C.V. And her prints have to be everywhere in here. Can you track her mobile number?’
‘If she’s got it turned on,’ Pottersfield said. ‘In the meantime, call your friend Pope, and I’ll get to the media people I know. We’ll get the twins’ faces everywhere, Peter. Someone will have seen them.’
Knight began to nod, but then said, ‘What if that’s what they want?’
‘What?’ Pottersfield asked. ‘Why?’
‘A sideshow,’ he said. ‘A diversion. Think about it. If you put their faces everywhere and tell the public that they’ve been kidnapped by a woman believed to be an associate of Cronus, law-enforcement manpower and media attention go to Isabel and Luke, leaving the Olympics open to a final attack.’
‘We’ve got to do something, Peter.’
Knight couldn’t believe he was saying it, but he replied, ‘We can wait them out for a few hours at least, Elaine. See if they get nervous. See if they call. If they don’t by, say, eight, then by all means, put their faces everywhere.’
Before Pottersfield could reply, Knight pulled out his mobile and punched in Hooligan’s number.
Knight heard cheering in the background and Hooligan crowed: ‘Did you catch that, Peter? It’s 1-1.We’re tied!’
‘Come to my house,’ Knight said. ‘Now.’
‘Now?’ Hooligan cried, sounding a little drunk. ‘Have you gone crazy? This is for the bloody gold medal and I’ve got midfield seats.’
‘Cronus has my kids,’ Knight said.
Silence, then: ‘No! Fuck. I’ll be right there, Peter. Right there.’
Knight hung up. Elaine held out her hand for his mobile. ‘I’ll need it for a few minutes while we put on a trace.’
He handed her the phone and went upstairs. He got Kate’s picture and brought it with him into the nursery as thunder shook the house. He sat on the couch, looked at the empty cots and the wallpaper that Kate had picked out and wondered if he had been destined for tragedy and loss.
Then he noticed the bottle of children’s liquid anti-histamine on the changing table. He set Kate’s picture down and went over, noticing that the bottle was almost empty. At that he felt duped and enraged. Marta had been drugging his kids right under his nose.
Pottersfield came in. She glanced at the photograph of Kate on the couch, and then handed Knight his phone. ‘You’re now linked to our system. Any call coming in to your number we should be able to trace. And I just got an alert. We found two bodies in a condemned factory contaminated with hazardous waste not far from the gasworks. Both women in their thirties. One was beaten to death within the last few hours – no ID. The other died earlier this week and was handless. We’re assuming it’s Andjela Brazlic and her older sister, Nada.’
‘Two Furies gone. It’s just Marta and Cronus now,’ Knight said dully, putting down the children’s cold-medicine bottle. ‘Do you think Daring could be Cronus? After what Farrell told us. The stalking in the Balkans? The flute?’
‘I don’t know.’
Knight suddenly felt gripped by doubt, intense and claustrophobic. ‘Does it matter where I am when a call comes in?’
‘It shouldn’t,’ Pottersfield replied.
He set Kate’s photograph down on the changing table and said, ‘I can’t just sit here, Elaine. I feel like I have to move. I’m going to take a walk. Is that okay?’
‘Just keep your mobile on.’
‘Tell Hooligan to call me when he gets here. And Jack Morgan should be notified. They’re at the stadium for the relays.’
She nodded and said, ‘We’ll find them.’
‘I know,’ he said with wavering conviction.
Knight put on his raincoat and left by the rear door in case the media were already camped outside. He walked down the alley, trying to decide whether to wander aimlessly or to get the car and drive back to High Beach Church to pray. But then he understood that he really had just one place to go, and only one person he wanted to see.
Knight altered direction and trudged through the rainy city, passing pubs and hearing cheering coming from inside. It sounded as though England was winning football gold while he was losing everything that ever mattered to him.
His hair and his trouser legs were soaking wet when he reached the door on Milner Street and rang the bell and pounded the knocker while looking up at the security camera.
The door opened, revealing Boss. ‘She can’t be seen,’ he said sharply.
‘Get out of my way, little man,’ Knight said in a tone so threatening that his mother’s assistant stood aside without further protest.
Knight opened the door of his mother’s studio without knocking. Amanda was hunched over her design table, cutting fabric. A dozen or more original new creations hung on mannequins around the room.
His mother looked up icily. ‘Haven’t I made it abundantly clear that I wish to be left alone, Peter?’
Walking towards her, Knight said, ‘Mother—’
But she cut him off: ‘Leave me alone, Peter. What in God’s name are you doing here? It’s your children’s birthday. You should be with them.’
It was the final straw. Knight felt dizzy and then blacked out.