Private Games

Chapter 6

SHORTLY AFTER INSPECTOR Pottersfield ordered Marshall’s remains bagged, Knight left the garden and the mansion consumed by far worse dread than he’d felt on entering.

He ducked beneath the police tape, avoided the newspaper jackals, and headed out of Lyall Mews, trying to decide how in God’s name he was going to tell his mother about Denton. But Knight knew that he had to, and quickly, before Amanda heard it from someone else. He absolutely did not want her to be alone when she learned that the best thing that had ever happened to her was—

‘Knight?’ a man’s voice called to him. ‘Is that you?’

Knight looked up to see a tall, athletic man – mid-forties and wearing a fine Italian suit – rushing towards him. Below his thick salt-and-pepper hair, anguish twisted his ruddy, square face.

Knight had met Michael ‘Mike’ Lancer at Private London’s offices twice in the eighteen months since the company had been hired to act as a special security detail during the Olympic Games. But he knew the man largely by his reputation.

A two-time world decathlon champion in the 1980s and 1990s, Lancer had served with and in the Queen’s Guard, which had allowed him to train full-time. At the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 he had led the decathlon after the first day of competition but had then cramped in the heat and humidity during the second day, finishing outside the top ten finishers.

Lancer had since become a motivational speaker and security consultant who often worked with Private International on big projects. He was also a member of LOCOG, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, and had been charged with helping to organise security for the mega-event.

‘Is it true?’ Lancer asked in a distraught voice. ‘Denton’s dead?’

‘Afraid so, Mike,’ Knight said.

Lancer’s eyes welled with tears. ‘Who would do this? Why?’

‘Looks like someone who hates the Olympics,’ Knight said. Then he described the manner of Marshall’s death, and the bloody X.

Rattled, Lancer said, ‘When do they think this happened?’

‘Shortly before midnight,’ Knight replied.

Lancer shook his head. ‘That means I saw him only two hours before his death. He was leaving the party at Tate Britain with …’ He stopped and looked at Knight in sad reappraisal.

‘Probably with my mother,’ Knight said. ‘They were engaged.’

‘Yes, I knew that you and she are related,’ Lancer said. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Peter. Does Amanda know?’

‘I’m on my way to tell her right now.’

‘You poor bastard,’ Lancer said. Then he looked off towards the police barrier. ‘Are those reporters there?’

‘A whole pack of them, and getting bigger,’ Knight said.

Lancer shook his head bitterly. ‘With all due loving respect to Denton, this is all we need with the opening ceremony tomorrow night. They’ll blast the lurid details all over the bloody world.’

‘Nothing you can do to stop that,’ Knight said. ‘But I might think about upping security on all members of the organising committee.’

Lancer made a puffing noise, and then nodded. ‘You’re right. I’d best catch a cab back to the office. Marcus is going to want to hear this in person.’

Marcus Morris, a politician who had stood down at the last election, was now chairman of the London Organising Committee.

‘My mother as well,’ Knight said and together they headed on towards Chesham Street where they thought there’d be more taxis.

Indeed, they’d just reached Chesham Street when a black cab appeared from the south across from the Diplomat Hotel. At the same time, farther away and from the north, a red cab came down the near lane. Knight hailed it.

Lancer signalled the taxi in the northbound lane, saying, ‘Give my condolences to your mother, and tell Jack I’ll be in touch sometime later today.’

Jack Morgan was the American owner of Private International. He’d been in town since the plane carrying five members of the London office had gone down in the North Sea with no survivors.

Lancer stepped off the kerb, and set off in a confident stride heading diagonally across the street while the red cab came closer.

But then, to Knight’s horror, he heard the growl of an engine and the squeal of tyres.

The black cab was accelerating, heading right at the LOCOG member.