Private Games

Chapter 22

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:

1ST DNA TEST: HAIR IS FEMALE.