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mother’s fiancé.
    Inspector Pottersfield stepped up beside Knight. In a thin voice, she said, ‘Tell me about Marshall.’
    Choking back his grief, Knight said, ‘Denton was a great, great man, Elaine. Ran a big hedge fund, made loads of money, but gave most of it away. He was also an absolutely critical member of the London Organising Committee. A lot of people think that without Marshall’s efforts, we never would have beaten Paris in our bid for the Games. He was also a nice guy, very modest about his achievements. And he made my mother very happy.’
    ‘I didn’t think that was possible,’ Pottersfield remarked.
    ‘Neither did I. Neither did Amanda. But he did,’ Knight said. ‘Until just now, I didn’t think Denton Marshall had an enemy in the world.’
    Pottersfield gestured at the bloody Olympic symbol. ‘Maybe it has more to do with the Olympics than who he was in the rest of his life.’
    Knight stared at Sir Denton Marshall’s head and returned his gaze to the corpse before saying, ‘Maybe. Or maybe this is just designed to throw us off track. Cutting off someone’s head can easily be construed as an act of rage, which is almost always personal at some level.’
    ‘You’re saying this could be revenge of some kind?’ Pottersfield replied.
    Knight shrugged. ‘Or a political statement. Or the work of a deranged mind. Or a combination of the three. I don’t know.’
    ‘Can you account for your mother’s whereabouts last evening between eleven and twelve-thirty?’ Pottersfield asked suddenly.
    Knight looked at her as if she was an idiot. ‘Amanda loved Denton.’
    ‘Spurned love can be a powerful motive to rage,’ Pottersfield observed.
    ‘There was no spurning,’ Knight snapped. ‘I would have known. Besides, you’ve seen my mother. She’s five foot five and weighs just under eight stone. Denton weighed nearly sixteen. There’s no way she’d have had the physical or emotional strength to cut off his head. And she had no reason to.’
    ‘So you’re saying you
do
know where she was?’ Pottersfield asked.
    ‘I’ll find out and get back to you about it. But first I have to tell her.’
    ‘I’ll do that if you think it might help.’
    ‘No, I’ll do it,’ Knight said, studying Marshall’s head one last time and then focusing on the way his mouth seemed twisted as if he’d been trying to spit something out.
    Knight fished in his pocket for a pen-sized torch, stepped around the Olympic symbol and directed the beam into the gap between Marshall’s lips. He saw a glint of something, and reached back into his pocket for a pair of forceps that he always kept there in case he wanted to pick something up without touching it.
    Refusing to look at his mother’s dead fiancé’s eyes, he began to probe between Marshall’s lips with the forceps.
    ‘Peter, stop that,’ Pottersfield ordered. ‘You’re—’
    But Knight was already turning to show her a tarnished bronze coin that he’d plucked from Marshall’s mouth.
    ‘New theory,’ he said. ‘It’s about money.’

Chapter 5
    WHEN I RETURNED to consciousness several days after the stoning, I was in hospital with a fractured skull and the nauseating feeling that I had been rewired somehow, made more alien than ever before.
    I remembered everything about the attack and everything about my attackers. But when the police came to ask me what had happened, I told them I had no idea. I said I had memories of entering the building, but nothing more; and their questions soon stopped.
    I healed slowly. A crablike scar formed on my scalp. My hair grew back, hiding it, and I began to nurture a dark fantasy that became my first obsession.
    Two weeks later, I returned home to the little monsters and Minister Bob. Even they could tell I’d changed. I was no longer a wild child. I smiled and acted happy. I studied and developed my body.
    Minister Bob thought that I’d found God.
    But I admit to you that I did it all by embracing hatred. I