Private Games

Chapter 67

KNIGHT TOOK FOUR quiet steps to the front hall closet and reached up high on a shelf for his spare Beretta.

He heard a noise like furniture moving and slid off his shoes, thinking: My room or the kids’?

Knight climbed the stairs as stealthily as a cat, looking all around. He heard another noise ahead of him. It was coming from his room. He crept down the hallway, gun up, and peered inside, seeing the desk on top of which his laptop lay shut.

He paused, listening intently. For several moments he heard nothing more.

Then the loo flushed. Thieves commonly relieve themselves in the homes of their victims. Knight had known that for years and figured he was dealing with a burglar. Stepping over the threshold into his bedroom, he aimed the pistol at the closed door. The handle twisted. Knight flipped off the safety.

The door swung open.

Marta stepped out and spotted Knight. And the gun.

Gasping, her hand flew to her chest and she screamed, ‘Don’t shoot!’

Knight’s brows knitted, but he lowered his pistol several inches. ‘Marta?’

The nanny was gasping. ‘You scared me, Mr Knight! My God, my heart feels like the fireworks.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, dropping the pistol to his side. ‘What are you doing here? I’m not supposed to see you for another hour.’

‘I came early so you can go to work early,’ Marta replied breathlessly. ‘You left me the key. I came in, saw the buggy gone, and thought you’d gone to the park, so I started to clean the kitchen and then came up to do the nursery.’

‘But you’re up here in my bedroom,’ Knight said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Marta replied plaintively, and then, in an embarrassed tone, she added: ‘I had to pee. Badly.’

After a moment’s pause in which he saw no guile on the nanny’s part, he pocketed the gun. ‘I apologise, Marta. I’m under stress. I overreacted.’

‘It’s both our faults, then,’ Marta said, just before Knight’s phone rang.

He snatched it up and immediately heard Isabel and Luke crying hysterically.

‘Pope?’ he said.

‘Where are you?’ the reporter demanded in a harried voice. ‘You said you’d be right back, and your kids are throwing a world-class shit fit.’

‘Two minutes,’ he promised and hung up. He looked at Marta, who appeared worried. ‘My friend,’ he said. ‘She’s not very good with kids.’

Marta smiled. ‘Then it is a very good thing I came early, yes?’

‘A very good thing,’ Knight said. ‘But we’re going to have to run.’

He sprang down the stairs and into the kitchen, seeing that the breakfast dishes had been cleaned and put away. He got milk and put it, some biscuits, and two plastic cups in a bag.

He locked the front door and together they hurried back to the park, where Luke was sitting off by himself in the grass, whacking the ground with his shovel, while Isabel knelt in the sandbox, crying and imitating an ostrich.

Pope was just standing there, out of her league, baffled about what to do.

Marta swooped in and gathered up Luke. She tickled his belly, which caused him to giggle and then to cry, ‘Marta!’

Isabel heard that, stopped crying, and pulled her hair out of the sand. She spotted Knight coming towards her and broke into a grin. ‘Daddy!’

Knight scooped up his daughter, brushed the sand from her hair, and kissed her. ‘Daddy’s here. So is Marta.’

‘I want milk!’ Isabel said, pouting.

‘Don’t forget the biscuits,’ Knight said, handing his daughter and the sack containing the milk to the concerned nanny, who brought the kids over to a picnic table and began to feed them.

‘What caused the meltdown?’ Knight asked Pope.

Flustered, the reporter said, ‘I don’t know, actually. It was just like there was a time bomb ticking that I couldn’t hear until it went off.’

‘That happens a lot,’ Knight remarked with a laugh.

Pope studied Marta. ‘The nanny been with you long?’

‘Not a week yet,’ Knight replied. ‘But she’s bloody fantastic. Best I’ve—’

Pope’s mobile rang. She answered and listened. After several moments she cried, ‘No fucking way! We’ll be there in twenty minutes!’

The reporter clicked off her phone, and spoke with quiet urgency, ‘That was Hooligan. He pulled a fingerprint off the package that Cronus sent me last night. He’s run it and wants us at Private London ASAP.’