Private Games

Chapter 69

‘THIS BETTER BE good, Peter,’ Elaine Pottersfield grumbled. ‘I’m under insane pressure, and I’m not in much of a mood for a fine-dining experience.’

‘We’re both under insane pressure,’ Knight shot back. ‘But I have to talk to you. And I need to eat. And you need to eat. I figured why not meet here and kill three birds with one stone.’

‘Here’ was a restaurant near Tottenham Court Road called Hakkasan. It had been Kate’s favourite Chinese restaurant in London. It was also the inspector’s favourite Chinese restaurant in London.

‘But this place is packed,’ Pottersfield said, taking a seat with some reluctance. ‘It will probably take an hour to …’

‘I’ve already ordered,’ Knight said. ‘The dish Kate liked best.’

His sister-in-law looked down at the table. At that angle she looked every bit Kate’s older sister. ‘Okay,’ she said at last. ‘Why am I here, Peter?’

Knight gave her the rundown on the Brazlic sisters – the Furies – and their alleged war crimes. As he was finishing his summary, their dinner, a double order of Szechuan Mugyu beef, arrived.

Pottersfield waited until the waiter left before asking, ‘And when were these sisters last heard of?’

‘July 1995, not long after the NATO-supervised ceasefire expired,’ Knight replied. ‘They were supposedly apprehended by Bosnian police officers after the mother of two of their victims recognised the Furies when they tried to buy food in a local produce market. According to that same mother, the girls were taken at night to a police station in a small village south-west of Srebrenica where they were to be turned over to NATO forces who were investigating the atrocities.’

Pottersfield said, ‘And what? They escaped?’

Knight nodded. ‘Villagers heard automatic-weapon fire coming from inside the police station in the dead of night. They were too frightened to investigate until the following morning when the bodies of seven Bosnians, including the two police officers, were found massacred. The Brazlics have been hunted ever since, but none of them surfaced until today.’

‘How did they get out of the police station?’ Pottersfield asked. ‘I’m assuming they’d been placed in restraints.’

‘You would think so,’ Knight agreed. ‘But here’s the other strange thing. Mladic’s kill squads used, for the most part, Soviet-era full-copper-jacket ammunition. So did the Bosnian police. It was Red Army surplus and found in all their unfired weapons. But the seven Bosnian men in the station were killed by 5.56-millimetre rounds throwing a very different kind of bullet – the kind given to NATO peacekeepers, in fact.’

Pottersfield picked at her meal with chopsticks, thinking. After several bites, she said, ‘So maybe one of the men who were killed that night had a NATO weapon and the sisters got hold of it and fought their way out.’

‘That’s one plausible scenario. Or a third party helped them, someone who was part of the NATO operation. I’m leaning towards that explanation.’

‘Evidence?’ she asked.

‘The bullets, primarily,’ Knight said. ‘But also because James Daring and Selena Farrell were in the Balkans in the mid-1990s attached to that NATO mission. Daring was assigned to protect antiquities from looters. But apart from that photo I saw of Farrell holding an automatic weapon in front of a NATO field truck, her role in the operation remains a mystery to me.’

‘Not for long,’ Pottersfield said. ‘I’ll petition NATO for her files.’

‘The war-crimes prosecutor is already on it,’ Knight said.

The Scotland Yard inspector nodded, but her focus was far away. ‘So what’s your theory: that this third entity in the escape – Daring or Farrell or both – could be Cronus?’

‘Perhaps,’ Knight said. ‘It follows, anyway.’

‘In some manner,’ she allowed while still managing to sound sceptical.

They ate in silence for several minutes before Pottersfield said: ‘There’s only one thing that bothers me about this theory of yours, Peter.’

‘What’s that?’ Knight asked.

His sister-in-law squinted and waved her chopsticks at him. ‘Let’s say you’re right and Cronus was the person or persons who helped the sisters escape, and let’s say that Cronus managed to turn these war criminals into anarchists, Olympics haters, whatever you want to call them.

‘The evidence to date reveals people who are not only brutal, but brutally effective. They managed to penetrate some of the toughest security in the world twice, kill, and escape twice.’

Knight saw where she was going: ‘You’re saying they’re detail-orientated, they’ve planned to the last factor, and yet they make mistakes with these letters.’

Pottersfield nodded. ‘Hair, skin, and now a fingerprint.’

‘Don’t forget the wig,’ Knight said. ‘Anything on that?’

‘Not yet, though this war-crimes angle should help us if DNA samples were ever taken from the sisters.’

Knight ate a couple more bites, and then said, ‘There’s also a question as to whether Farrell, Daring or both of them had the wherewithal, the financial means to concoct a deadly assault on the Olympics. It has to cost money, and lots of it.’

‘I thought of that too,’ Pottersfield replied. ‘This morning we took a look at James Daring’s bank accounts and credit-card statements. That television show has made him wealthy. And his accounts show several major cash withdrawals lately. Professor Farrell, on the other hand, lives more modestly. Except for hefty purchases at expensive fashion boutiques here and in Paris, and getting her hair done at trendy salons once a month, she leads a fairly austere life.’

Knight recalled the dressing table and the high-end clothes in the professor’s bedroom and tried again to make it fit with the dowdy woman he’d met at King’s College. He couldn’t. Was she dressing up to meet Daring? Was there something between them that Knight and his colleagues weren’t aware of?

He glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll pay and take my leave, then. The new nanny is working overtime.’

Pottersfield looked away as he put his napkin on the table and raised his hand for the bill. ‘How are they?’ she asked. ‘The twins?’

‘They’re fine,’ Knight said, and then gazed sincerely at his sister-in-law. ‘I know they would love to meet their Aunt Elaine. Don’t you think they deserve to have a relationship with their mother’s sister?’

It was as if invisible armour instantly enclosed the Scotland Yard inspector. Her posture went tight and she said, ‘I’m simply not there yet. I don’t know if I could bear it.’

‘Their birthday’s a week from Saturday.’

‘Do you honestly think I could ever forget that day?’ Pottersfield asked, getting up from the table.

‘No, Elaine,’ Knight replied. ‘And neither will I. Ever. But I have hope that at some point I’ll be able to forgive that day. I hope you will, too.’

Pottersfield said, ‘You’ll settle the bill?’

Knight nodded. She turned to leave. He called after her, ‘Elaine, I’ll probably be having a birthday party for them at some point. I’d like it if you came.’

Pottersfield looked over her shoulder at him, her voice raspy when she replied. ‘Like I said, Peter, I don’t know if I’m there yet.’