Private Games

Chapter 101

A HALF-HOUR LATER, approaching noon, Pope glanced nervously from coverage of the men’s marathon to Hooligan, who was still hunched over the shards of the iPhone, trying to coax Knight’s whereabouts from them.

‘Anything?’ the reporter asked, feeling completely stymied.

‘Sim card’s pretty fuckin’ hammered, eh?’ Private London’s chief scientist replied without looking up. ‘But I think I’m getting close.’

Jack had left to oversee security at the finish line of the men’s marathon. Elaine Pottersfield was in the lab, however. The police inspector had arrived only a few moments before, agitated and exhausted by the pressures of the preceding twenty-four hours.

‘Where did this cabbie say he picked up Peter?’ she asked impatiently.

Pope said, ‘Somewhere in Knightsbridge, I think. If Oladuwa had a mobile we could call him, but he said his wife’s got it.’

Pottersfield thought a moment. ‘Milner Street in Kensington, perhaps?’

‘That was it,’ Hooligan grunted.

‘Knight was at his mother’s, then,’ the inspector said. ‘Amanda must know something.’ She yanked out her phone and started scrolling for her number.

‘Here we are,’ Hooligan said, raising his head from two sensors clipped to a surviving piece of Knight’s sim card to look at the screen, which was covered with the gibberish of code.

He leaned over to a keyboard and began typing even as Pope heard Pottersfield say hello, identify herself as both a police detective and the sister of Knight’s dead wife, and ask to speak with Amanda Knight. Then the inspector left the lab.

Two minutes later, Hooligan’s screen mutated from electronic hieroglyphics to a blurry screen shot of a website. Pope said, ‘What is that?’

‘Looks like a map of some sort,’ Hooligan replied as the inspector burst back into the lab. ‘Can’t read the URL, though.’

‘Trace Angels!’ Pottersfield shouted. ‘It says Trace Angels!’