I embrace her and whisper in her ear: 'Watch your sister. She's impulsive.'

When we part, Teagan's face is expressionless. My cold warrior.

Removing the apron and gloves, I watch the sisters leave, and my hand travels to that crablike scar on the back of my head. Scratching it, the hatred ignites almost instantly, and I deeply wish that I could be one of those two women tonight. But, in consolation, I remind myself that the ultimate revenge will be mine and mine alone. The disposable mobile in my pocket rings. It's Marta.

'I managed to put a bug in Knight's mobile before he left for work,' she informs me. 'I'll tap the home computer when the children sleep.'

'Did he give you the evening off?'

'I didn't ask for it,' Marta says.

If the stupid bitch were in front of me right now, I swear I'd wring her pretty little neck. 'What do you mean, you didn't ask?' I demand in a tight voice.

'Relax,' she says. 'I'll be right where I'm needed when I'm needed. The children will be asleep. They'll never even know I was gone. And neither will Knight. He told me not to expect him until almost midnight.'

'How can you be sure the brats will be sleeping?'

'How else would I do it? I'm going to drug them.'

Chapter 51

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, inside the Aquatics Centre in the grounds of the Olympic Park, US diver Hunter Pierce flipped backwards off the ten-metre platform. She spun through the chlorine-tainted air, corkscrewing twice before slicing the water with a cutting sound, leaving a shallow whirlpool on the surface and little else.

Knight joined the packed house, cheering, clapping and whistling. But no one in the crowd celebrated more than the American diver's three children one boy and two girls in the front row, stamping their feet and waving their hands at their mother as she surfaced, grinning wildly.

That was Pierce's fourth attempt, and her best in Knight's estimation. After three dives she had been in third place behind athletes from South Korea and Panama. The Chinese were a surprisingly distant fourth and fifth.

She's in the zone, Knight thought. She feels it.

As he'd been for much of the past two hours, Knight was standing in the exit gangway opposite the ten-metre platform, watching the crowd and the competition. Nearly four days had passed since Teeter's death, four days without subsequent attack attack, and one day since the discovery of the software program in Selena Farrell's computer designed to breach and take over the Olympic Stadium's electronic scoreboard system.

Everyone was saying it was over. Capturing the mad professor was only a matter of time. The investigation was simply a manhunt now.

But Knight was nevertheless concerned that another killing might be coming. He'd taken to studying the Olympic schedule at all hours of the night, trying to anticipate where Cronus might strike again. It would be somewhere high-profile, he figured, with intense media coverage, as there was here in the Aquatics Centre as Pierce tried to become the oldest woman ever to win the platform competition.

The American diver hoisted herself from the pool, grabbed a towel, ran over, and slapped the outstretched hands of her children before heading towards the jacuzzi to keep her muscles supple. Before she got there, a roar went up at the scores that flashed on the board: all high eights and nines. Pierce had just moved herself into the silver medal position.

Knight clapped again with even more enthusiasm. The London Games needed a feel-good story to counteract the pall that Cronus had cast over the Games, and this was it. Pierce was defying her age, the odds, and the murders. Indeed, she'd become something of a spokesman for the US Team, decrying Cronus in the wake of Teeter's death. And now here she was, within striking distance of gold.

I am damn lucky to be here, Knight thought. Despite everything, I'm lucky in many ways, especially to have found that Marta.

The woman felt like a gift from on high. His kids were different creatures around her, as if she were the Pied Piper or something. Luke was even talking about using the 'big-boy loo'. And she was incredibly professional. His house had never looked so organised and clean. All in all, it was as if a great weight had been lifted from Knight's shoulders, freeing him to hunt for the madman stalking the Olympics.

At the same time, however, his mother had begun to retreat into her old pre-Denton Marshall ways. She'd opted to hold a memorial for Marshall after the Olympics, and had then disappeared into her work. And there was a bitterness that crept into her voice every time Knight talked to her.

'Do you ever answer your mobile, Knight?' Karen Pope complained.

Startled, Knight looked round, surprised to see the reporter standing next to him in the entryway. 'I've been having problems with it, actually,' he said.

That was true. For the past day, there'd been an odd static audible during Knight's cellular connections, but he had not had time to have the phone looked at.

'Get a new phone, then,' Pope snapped. 'I'm under a lot of pressure to produce and I need your help.'

'Looks to me like you're doing just fine on your own,' Knight said.

Indeed, in addition to the story about the things found on Farrell's home computer, Pope had published an article detailing the results of Teeter's autopsy: the shot-putter had been given a cocktail not of poisons but of drugs designed to radically raise his blood pressure and heart rate, which had resulted in a haemorrhage of his pulmonary artery, hence the bloody bloody foam that Knight had seen on his lips. foam that Knight had seen on his lips.

In the same story, Pope had got an inside scoop from Mike Lancer explaining how Farrell must have isolated a flaw in the Olympics' IT system, which had allowed her a gateway into the Games' server and the scoreboard set-up.

Lancer said the flaw had been isolated and fixed and all volunteers were being doubly scrutinised. Lancer also revealed that security cameras had caught a woman wearing a Games Master uniform handing Teeter a bottle of water shortly before the Parade of Athletes but she'd been wearing one of the hats given to volunteers, which had hidden her face.

'Please, Knight,' Pope pleaded. 'I need something here.'

'You know more than me,' he replied, watching as the Panamanian in third place made an over-rotation on her last dive, costing her critical points.

Then the South Korean athlete in first place faltered. Her jump lacked snap and it affected the entire trajectory of her dive, resulting in a mediocre score.

The door was wide open for Pierce now, Knight thought, growing excited. He could not take his gaze off the American doctor as she began to climb to the top of the diving tower for her fifth and final dive.

Pope poked him in the arm and said, 'Someone told me Inspector Pottersfield is your sister-in-law. You have to know things that I don't.'

'Elaine does not talk to me unless she absolutely has to,' Knight said, lowering his binoculars.

'Why's that?' Pope asked, sceptically.

'Because she thinks I'm responsible for my wife's death.'

Chapter 52

KNIGHT WATCHED PIERCE reach the three-storey-high platform, and then he glanced over at Pope to find that the reporter was looking shocked. reach the three-storey-high platform, and then he glanced over at Pope to find that the reporter was looking shocked.

'Were you? Responsible?' she asked.

Knight sighed. 'Kate had problems during the pregnancy, but wanted the delivery to be natural and at home. I knew the risks we both knew the risks but I deferred to her. If she'd been in hospital, she would have lived. I'll wrestle with that for the rest of my life because, apart from my own feelings of loss and remorse, Elaine Pottersfield won't let me forget it.'

Knight's admission confused and saddened Pope. 'Anyone ever tell you that you're a complicated guy?'

He did not reply. He was focused on Pierce, praying that she'd pull it off. He'd never been a huge sports fan, but this felt ... well, monumental for some reason. Here she was, thirty-eight, a widow and a mother of three about to make her fifth and final dive, the most difficult in her repertoire.

At stake: Olympic gold.

But Pierce looked cool as she settled and then took two quick quick strides to the edge of the platform. She leaped out and up into the pike position. She flipped back towards the platform in a gainer, twisted, and then somersaulted twice more before knifing into the water. strides to the edge of the platform. She leaped out and up into the pike position. She flipped back towards the platform in a gainer, twisted, and then somersaulted twice more before knifing into the water.

The crowd exploded. Pierce's son and daughters began dancing and hugging each other.

'She did it!' Knight cried and felt tears in his eyes and then confusion: why was he getting so emotional about this?

He couldn't answer the question, but he had goose bumps when Pierce ran to her children amid applause that turned deafening when the scores went up, confirming her gold-medal win.

'OK, so she won,' Pope said snippily. 'Please, Knight. Help a girl out.'

Knight had an angry look about him as he yanked out his phone. 'I've got a copy of the complete inventory of items they found at Farrell's flat and her office.'

Pope's eyes grew wide. Then she said, 'Thanks, Knight. I owe you.'

'Don't mention it.'

'It is over, then, really?' Pope said, with more than a little sadness in her voice. 'Just a manhunt from here on out. With all the beefed-up security, it would be impossible for Farrell to strike again. I mean, right?'

Knight nodded as he watched Pierce holding her children, smiling through her tears, and felt thoroughly satisfied. Some kind of balance had been achieved with the American diver's performance.

Of course, other athletes had already shown remarkable fortitude in the last four days of competition. A swimmer from Australia had come back from a shattered right leg last year to win swimming gold in the men's 400-metre freestyle race. A flyweight boxer from Niger, raised in abject poverty and subjected to long periods of malnourishment, had somehow developed a lion's heart that had allowed him to win his first two boxing matches with first-round knockouts.

But Pierce's story and her vocal defiance of Cronus seemed to echo and magnify what continued to be right with the modern Olympic Games. The doctor had shown grace under incredible pressure. She'd shaken off Teeter's death and had won. As a result the Games no longer felt as tainted. At least to Knight.

Then his mobile rang. It was Hooligan.

'What do you know that I don't, mate?' Knight asked in an upbeat voice, provoking a sneer from Pope.

'Those skin cells we found in the second letter?' Hooligan said, sounding shaken. 'For three days, I get no match. But then, through an old friend from MI5, I access a NATO database in Brussels. And I get a hit a mind-boggling hit.'

Knight's happiness over Pierce's win subsided, and he turned away from Pope, saying, 'Tell me.'

'The DNA matches a hair sample taken in the mid-1990s as part of a drug-screening test given to people applying to be consultants to the NATO peacekeeping contingent that went to the Balkans to enforce the ceasefire.'

Knight was confused. Farrell had been in the Balkans at some point in the 1990s. But Hooligan had said his initial examination indicated that the skin cells in the second letter from Cronus belonged to a male.

'Whose DNA is it?' Knight demanded.

'Indiana Jones,' Hooligan said, sounding very disappointed. 'Indiana Fuckin' Jones.'

Chapter 53

FIVE MILES AWAY, and several hundred yards south of the Thames in Greenwich, Petra and Teagan walked under leaden skies towards the security gate of the O2 Arena, an ultra-modern white-domed structure perforated by and trussed to yellow towers that held the roof in place. The O2 Arena sat at the north end of a peninsula and normally played host to concerts and larger theatrical productions. But for the Olympics it had been transformed into the gymnastics venue.

Petra and Teagan were dressed in official Games Master uniforms, and carried official credentials that identified them as recruited and vetted volunteers for that evening's Olympic highlight event: the women's team gymnastics final.

Teagan looked grim, focused, and determined as they walked towards the line of volunteers and concessionaires waiting to clear security. But Petra appeared uncertain, and she was walking with a hesitant gait.

'I said I was sorry,' Petra said.

Teagan said icily: 'Hardly the actions of a superior being.'

'My mind was elsewhere,' her sister replied.

'Where else could you possibly be? This is the moment we've waited for!'

Petra hesitated before complaining in a whisper: 'This isn't like the other tasks that Cronus has given us. It feels like a suicide mission. The end of two Furies.'

Teagan halted and glared at her sister. 'First the letter and now doubts?'

Petra's attitude hardened. 'What if we get caught?'

'We won't.'

'But-'

Teagan cut her off, asking archly, 'Do you honestly want me to call Cronus and say that now, at the last minute, you are leaving this to me? Do you really want to provoke him like that?'

Petra blinked and then her expression twisted towards alarm. 'No. No, I never said anything like that. Please. I'll ... I'll do it.' She straightened and brushed her jacket with her fingers. 'A moment of doubt,' she added. 'That's all. Nothing more than that. Even superior beings entertain doubt, sister.'

'No, they don't,' said Teagan, thinking 'impetuous' and 'lacking in attention to detail' wasn't that how Cronus had described her younger sister?

Some of that was definitely true. Petra had just now proved it, hadn't she?

As they'd waited on a pavement near King's College, their only stop on the way to the gymnastics venue, the youngest of the Furies had forgotten to keep her gloves on when getting out the latest letter to Pope. Teagan had gone over the package with a disposable wipe, and had then held it with the wipe until she could pass the envelope to a bicycle messenger who gave them a sharp but cursory glance in their fat-women disguises.

As if in reaction to the same memory, Petra raised her chin towards Teagan. 'I know who I am, sister. I know what fate holds for me. I'm clear about that now.'

Teagan hesitated, but then gestured to Petra to lead on. Despite her sister's doubts, Teagan felt nothing but waves of certainty and pleasure. Drugging a man to death was one thing, but there was no substitute for looking the person you were about to kill in the eye, showing them your power.

It had been years since that had happened since Bosnia, in fact. What she had done back then should have been fuel for nightmares, but it was not so for Teagan.

She often dreamed of the men and boys she'd executed in the wake of her parents' death and the gang rape. Those bloody dreams were Teagan's favourites, true fantasies that she enjoyed reliving again and again.