Private Games (8 page)

The museum curator picked up his iPad and began typing, saying, ‘A Titan – one of the gods who ruled the world before the Olympians. Again, Selena Farrell would be better on this point, but Cronus was the God of Time, and the son of Gaia and Uranus, the ancient, ancient rulers of earth and sky.’

Daring explained that, at his enraged mother’s urging, Cronus rebelled eventually against his father and ended up castrating him with a scythe.

A long curved blade, Knight thought. Wasn’t that how Elaine had described the murder weapon?

‘According to the myth, Cronus’s father’s blood fell into the sea and re-formed as the three Furies,’ Daring continued. ‘They were Cronus’s half sisters – spirits of vengeance, and snake-haired like Medusa.

‘Cronus married Rhea and fathered seven of the twelve gods who would become the original Olympians.’ Then Daring fell silent, seeming troubled.

‘What’s the matter?’ Pope asked.

Daring’s nose twitched as if he smelled something foul. ‘Cronus did something brutal when he was told of a prediction that his own son would turn against him.’

‘What was that?’ Knight asked.

The curator turned the iPad towards them. It showed a dark and disturbing painting of a dishevelled bearded and half-naked man chewing on the bloody arm of a small human body. The head and opposite arm were already gone.

‘This is a painting by the Spanish painter Goya,’ Daring said. ‘Its title is
Saturn Devouring his Son
. Saturn was the Romans’ name for Cronus.’

The painting repulsed Knight. Pope said, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘In the Roman and Greek myths,’ the curator replied testily, ‘Cronus ate his children one by one.’

‘ATE THEM?’ POPE
said, her lip curling.

Knight glanced at the painting and envisioned his own children in a playground near his home. He felt even more revolted.

‘It’s a myth – what can I say?’ Daring replied.

The curator went on to explain that Rhea hated her husband for devouring their children and she vowed that no more of her unborn children would suffer the same fate. So she snuck off to have the son she named Zeus, and hid him immediately after birth. Then she got Cronus drunk, and gave him a rock wrapped in a blanket to eat instead of her son.

‘Much later,’ Daring continued, ‘Zeus rose up, conquered Cronus, forced him to vomit up his children, and then hurled his father into the darkest abysmal pits of Tartarus, or something like that. Ask Farrell.’

‘Okay,’ Knight said, unsure if any of this helped or not, and wondering if this letter could possibly be a ruse designed to take them in a wrong direction. ‘You a fan of the modern Olympics, doctor?’

The television star frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Your exhibit strikes me as a bit slanted in favour of the ancient Games.’

Daring turned coolly indignant. ‘I think the work is quite even-handed. But I grant you that the ancient Games were about honour and excelling in celebration of the Greek religion, while the modern version, in my personal opinion, has become too influenced by corporations and money. Ironic, I know, since this exhibit was built with the assistance of private benefactors.’

‘So, in a way, you agree with Cronus?’ Pope asked.

The curator’s voice went chilly. ‘I may agree that the original ideals of the Olympics could be getting lost in today’s Games, but I certainly do not agree with killing people to “cleanse” them. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must finish up and change before the reception.’

SEVERAL HOURS AFTER
Marta killed the forger, the four of us were staying in a no-star hotel on the outskirts of western Sarajevo. I handed the sisters envelopes that contained their passports and enough money to travel.

‘Take separate taxis or buses to the train station. Then use completely separate routes to the address I put in your passports. In the alley behind that address, you’ll find a low brick wall. Under the third brick from the left you’ll find a key. Buy food. Go inside and wait there quietly until I arrive. Do not go out if you can avoid it. Do not be conspicuous. Wait.’

Marta translated and then asked, ‘When will you get there?’

‘In a few days,’ I said. ‘No more than a week, I should imagine.’

She nodded. ‘We wait for you.’

I believed her. After all, where else were she and her sisters to go? Their fates were mine now, and mine was theirs. Feeling more in control of my destiny than at any other time in my life, I left the Serbian girls and went out into the streets where I found dirt and grime to further soil my torn, bloody clothes. Then I wiped down the guns and threw them in a river.

An hour before dawn I wandered up to the security gate at the NATO garrison, acting in a daze. I had been missing for two and a half days.

I gave my superiors and doctors vague recollections of the bomb that tore apart the Land Cruiser. I said I’d wandered for hours, and then slept in the woods. In the morning, I’d set off again. It wasn’t until the previous evening that I’d remembered exactly who I was and where I was supposed to go; and I’d headed for the garrison with the fuzzy navigation of an alcoholic trying to find home.

The doctors examined me and determined that I had a fractured skull for the second time in my life. Two days later, I was on a medical transport: Cronus flying home to his Furies.

AT FIVE MINUTES
to four that Thursday afternoon, Knight left One Aldwych, a five-star boutique hotel in London’s West End theatre district, and found Karen Pope waiting on the pavement, looking intently at her BlackBerry screen.

‘His secretary wasn’t putting you off. The doorman says he does come for drinks quite often, but he’s not in there yet,’ Knight said, referring to Richard Guilder, Marshall’s long-time financial partner. ‘Let’s go and wait inside.’

Pope shook her head, and then gestured across the Strand to a row of Edwardian buildings. ‘That’s King’s College, right? That’s where Selena Farrell works, the classical Greek expert that Indiana Jones wannabe told us to talk to. I looked her up. She
has
written extensively about the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus and his play
The Eumenides
, which is another name for the Furies. We could go and chat with her and then swing back for Guilder.’

Knight screwed up his face. ‘In all honesty, I don’t know if understanding more about the myth of Cronus and the Furies is going to help us get any closer to catching Marshall’s killer.’

‘And now I know something you don’t,’ she said, shaking her BlackBerry at him haughtily. ‘Turns out that Farrell fought against the London Olympics tooth and nail. She sued to have the whole thing stopped, especially the compulsory purchase orders that took all that land in East London for the Olympic Park. The professor evidently lost her house when the park went in.’

Feeling his heart begin to race, Knight set off in the direction of the college, saying, ‘Denton ran the process that took that land. She had to have hated him.’

‘Maybe enough to cut off his head,’ Pope said, struggling to keep up.

Then Knight’s mobile buzzed. A text from Hooligan:

1
ST
DNA
TEST: HAIR IS FEMALE
.

THEY FOUND SELENA
Farrell in her office. The professor was in her early forties, a big-bosomed woman who dressed the part of a dowdy Earth child: baggy, faded peasant dress, oval black glasses, no make-up, clogs, and her head wrapped in a scarf held in place by two wooden hairpins.

But it was the beauty mark that caught Knight’s eye. Set above her jawline about midway down her right cheek, it put him in mind of a young Elizabeth Taylor and made him think that, given the right circumstances and manner of dress, the professor could have been quite attractive.

As Dr Farrell inspected his identification, Knight glanced around at various framed pictures: one of the professor climbing in Scotland, another of her posing beside some Greek ruins, and a third in which she was much younger, in sunglasses, khaki pants and shirt, posing with an automatic weapon beside a white truck that said NATO on the side.

‘Okay,’ Farrell said, returning Knight’s badge. ‘What are we here to discuss?’

‘Sir Denton Marshall, a member of the Olympic Organising Committee,’ Knight said, watching for her reaction.

Farrell stiffened, and then pursed her lips in distaste. ‘What about him?’

‘He’s been murdered,’ Pope said. ‘Decapitated.’

The professor appeared genuinely shocked. ‘Decapitated? Oh, that’s horrible. I didn’t like the man, but … that’s barbaric.’

‘Marshall took your house and your land,’ Knight remarked.

Farrell hardened. ‘He did. I hated him for it. I hated him and everyone who’s in favour of the Olympics for it. But I did not kill him. I don’t believe in violence.’

Knight glanced at the photo of her with the automatic weapon. But he decided not to challenge her, asking instead: ‘Can you account for your whereabouts around ten forty-five last night?’

The classics professor arched back in her chair and took off her glasses, revealing amazing sapphire eyes that stared intently at Knight. ‘I
can
account for my whereabouts at that time, but I won’t unless it’s necessary. I enjoy my privacy.’

‘Tell us about Cronus,’ Pope said.

The professor drew back. ‘You mean the Titan?’

‘That’s the one,’ Pope said.

She shrugged. ‘He’s mentioned by Aeschylus, especially during the third play in his Oresteia cycle,
The Eumenides
. They were the three Furies of vengeance born from the blood of Cronus’s father. Why are you asking about him? All in all, Cronus is a minor figure in Greek mythology.’

Pope glanced at Knight, who nodded. She dug into her bag. She came up with her mobile, which she fiddled with for several seconds as she said to the professor, ‘I received a package today from someone who calls himself Cronus and who claims to be Marshall’s killer. There’s a letter and this: it’s a recording of a recording, but …’

As the reporter returned to her bag, looking for her copy of Cronus’s letter, the weird, irritating flute music began to float from her phone.

The classics professor froze after a few notes had played.

The melody went on and Farrell stared at her desk, becoming agitated. Then she looked around wildly as if she was hearing hornets. Her hands shot up as though to cover her ears, dislodging the hairpins and loosening her headscarf.

She panicked and raised her hands to hold the scarf in place. Then she leaped to her feet and bolted for the door, choking: ‘For God’s sake turn it off! It’s giving me a migraine! It’s making me sick!’

Knight jumped to his feet and went out after Farrell, who clopped at high speed down the hall before barging into a women’s loo.

‘That set off something big,’ Pope said. She’d come up behind him.

‘Uh-huh,’ Knight said. He went back into the office, headed straight to the classics professor’s desk and plucked a small evidence bag from his pocket.

He turned the bag inside out before picking up one of the hairpins that had fallen before Farrell bolted. He wrapped the bag around the pins and then drew them out before dropping them back on the desk.

‘What are you doing?’ Pope demanded in a whisper.

Knight sealed the bag and murmured, ‘Hooligan says the hair sample from the envelope was female.’

He heard someone approaching the office, slid the evidence into his coat chest pocket and sat down. Pope stood, and was looking towards the door when another woman, much younger than Farrell but with a similar lack of fashion sense, entered and said: ‘Sorry. I’m Nina Langor, Professor Farrell’s teaching assistant.’

‘Is she all right?’ Pope asked.

‘She said she’s suffering from a migraine and is going home. She said if you’ll call her on Monday or Tuesday she’ll explain.’

‘Explain what?’ Knight demanded.

Nina Langor appeared bewildered. ‘I honestly have no idea. I’ve never seen her act like that before.’

TEN MINUTES LATER
, Knight followed Pope up the stairs into One Aldwych, looking questioningly at the hotel doorman he’d spoken with earlier and getting a nod in response. Knight slipped the doorman a ten-pound note and followed Pope towards the muffled sounds of happy voices.

‘That music got to Farrell,’ Pope said. ‘She’d heard it before.’

‘I agree,’ Knight said. ‘It threw her hard.’

‘Is it possible she’s Cronus?’ Pope asked.

‘And uses the name to make us think she’s a man? Sure. Why not?’

They entered the hotel’s dramatic Lobby Bar, which was triangular in shape, with a soaring vaulted ceiling, pale marble floor, glass walls and intimate groupings of fine furniture.