Private Games

Saturday, 28 July 2012

PAUL TEETER, LEADING FIELD athlete and tireless advocate for disadvantaged youth, died en route to hospital shortly after midnight. He was twenty-six.

Hours later, Knight suffered a nightmare that featured the flute music, the severed head of Denton Marshall, the blood blooming on Richard Guilder’s chest, Joe Mascolo crashing through the cocktail table at the Lobby Bar, and the bloody foam on the shot-putter’s lips.

He awoke with a start, and for several heart-racing moments the Private investigator had no idea where he was.

Then he heard Luke sucking his thumb in the darkness and knew. He began to calm down and pulled the sheets up around his shoulders, thinking of Gary Boss’s face when Knight had arrived home at three in the morning.

The place had been a shambles and his mother’s personal assistant vowed to never, ever babysit Knight’s insane children again. Even if Amanda quintupled his salary he would not do it.

His mother was upset with Knight as well. Not only had he cut out on her the night before, he hadn’t responded to her calls after Teeter’s death had been announced. But he’d been swamped.

Knight tried to doze again, but his mind lurched between worry about finding a new nanny for his kids, his mother, and the contents of Cronus’s second letter. He, Jack and Hooligan had examined the letter in the clean room at Private London shortly after Pope brought them the package at around one a.m.

‘What honour can there be in a victory that is not earned?’ Cronus had written at the start of the letter. ‘What glory in defeating your opponent through deceit?’

Cronus claimed that Teeter was a fraud ‘emblematic of the legions of corrupt Olympic athletes willing to use any illegal drug at their disposal to enhance their performance.’

The letter had gone on to claim that Teeter and other unnamed athletes at the London Games were using an extract of deer and elk antler ‘velvet’ to increase their strength, speed, and recovery time. Antler is the fastest growing substance in the world because the nutrient-rich sheathing, or velvet, that surrounds it during development is saturated with IGF-1, a super-potent growth hormone banned under Olympic rules. Under careful administration, however, and delivered by mouth spray rather than direct injection, the use of antler velvet was almost impossible to detect.

‘The illicit benefits of IGF-1 are enormous,’ Cronus wrote. ‘Especially to a strength athlete like Teeter because it gives him the ability to build muscle faster, and recover faster from workouts.’

The letter had gone on to accuse two herbalists – one in Los Angeles and another in London – of being involved in Teeter’s elaborate deception.

Documents that accompanied the letter seemed to shore up Cronus’s claims. Four were receipts from the herbalists showing sales and delivery of red-deer velvet from New Zealand to the post-office box of an LA construction company that belonged to Teeter’s brother-in-law Philip. Other documents purported to show the results of independent cutting-edge tests on blood taken from Teeter.

‘They clearly note the presence of IGF-1 in Teeter’s system within the last four months,’ Cronus wrote before concluding. ‘And so this wilful cheat, Paul Teeter, had to be sacrificed to cleanse the Games and make them pure again.’

On the couch in the twins’ nursery, several hours after reading those words, Knight stared at the dim forms of his children, thinking, is this how you make the Olympics pure again? By murdering people? What kind of insane person thinks that way? And why?