He looked up, his eyes meeting Sarah’s again. She hadn’t moved. The hardback was still clutched in her lap.
‘James knew about this?’ she asked.
‘The story was only in the papers for a few days, and they used my father’s name, Campbell. Knox is my grandmother’s name. But James still found it in the pre-war records. He knew the Service would never trust me if anyone else discovered what my parents had done. So he let my secret stay hidden.’
‘What does this have to do with last Sunday night?’ Sarah asked.
‘It was the anniversary.’
Knox had learned not to hate his parents. But he still couldn’t forgive them. Every year he marked their deaths and honoured the memories of the police officers they’d killed.
‘And if you’d told the inquiry that,’ Sarah said, ‘they’d have found out everything and James would have been drummed out of the Service before he could defend himself.’
Knox nodded. The secret wasn’t even Holland’s, but he’d kept it. And the simple act of not exposing Knox would have damned him.
‘And you’d become a scapegoat, blamed for the sins of your parents and anything else the Service felt like pinning on you.’
Knox nodded again. ‘It would have been the end of both our careers. He’s protected me for so long, I have to do the same for him.’
‘Then what’s changed now?’
Knox had come this far; there was no point holding anything else back. He told her about everything that had happened since she’d found Holland’s body on the rug between them a week ago. He told her about Manning’s rapid consolidation of power, about the sidelining of White at a time when he was most needed, and about the attacks on him in London and Stockholm.
Sarah was as shrewd as her husband at his best. She probed Knox, testing him to prove every connection and leap he’d made. And by the end of her grilling she agreed with Knox’s conclusions: that Manning was most likely a Soviet agent and responsible for Holland’s coma.
‘That bastard,’ she said. ‘I want you to stop him. And I want him to pay.’
CHAPTER 48
Knox left Wytchen House and headed for Highgate tube station and the Northern Line back into town. But instead of changing onto the Central Line at Tottenham Court Road to meet Bennett, he made his way up to street level. He knew it was a risk to go back to Kemp House so soon after the fire, but he wanted to see just how much damage had been done, and if anything had managed to survive the inferno.
He took a circuitous route through Soho, dropping down Charing Cross Road and cutting along Old Compton Street before turning into Walker’s Court at the southern end of Berwick Street.
Walker’s Court was one of the small stretches of Soho that truly seemed to exist outside of time. Its narrow entrance off Brewer Street was framed by a windowed gallery that hung above the passage and connected the two buildings on either side. And it was lined with shops that looked like they belonged in a Dickens novel, and made their money selling the city’s gentlemen provisions for the weekend.
There were always a couple of men loitering in the passage, building up the courage to go inside one of its emporiums. This afternoon was no different, and as Knox stepped under the gallery bridge he spotted two hanging around at the other end of the passage. Maybe they were nervous shoppers, maybe they were watching the entrance to Kemp House. Knox decided that either way it made sense to encourage them to move on.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ he said, doing his best impression of a plain-clothed police officer. ‘Enjoying yourselves?’
Both men turned bright red and immediately started to back off. Knox waited until he saw them both disappear round the corner onto Wardour Street, then he crossed over to the entrance of Kemp House, glancing up at the charred streaks that crowned the building.
He took the lift up to the top floor and checked the corridor and stairwell before heading for his flat. The front door had been smashed in by the firefighters and replaced with a heavy tarpaulin sheet secured around the frame. Knox guessed this had been done by the police, who would have taken over from the fire brigade last night and who might now also be looking for him. Depending on who at the Met had been given the case, word of the fire might even have already made it to Leconfield House.
Every inch of the tarpaulin edge was fixed down, but it had a covered seal running up one side of it. As Knox pulled it open fresh air rushed into the flat and a burnt stench flowed out.
He stepped through the heavy sheeting and made his way inside. The air was still heavy with smoke particles and water vapour from the storm and the firefighters’ hoses. There were more sheets across the blown-out windows – the place had been hermetically sealed.
The bedroom looked like it had survived the fire relatively unscathed. But the same couldn’t be said for the main living area. The walls were black, the marble dining table stained and cracked from the heat, and the Eames lounger had been reduced to a pile of ash and a set of twisted legs.
Knox walked around the room, leaving damp black footprints in the small patches of floor not already covered in soot as he inspected the full extent of the damage. He recognised the shape of his kitchen, but like everything else it was now a dull, matt black. It felt like he was fumbling around in the dead of night.
There was no sign of what had caused the fire. The oven was badly burnt, but still intact – it hadn’t exploded, and there were no scorch marks around it. The official line, as it always was in situations like this, would be that the fire had been caused by a gas leak. But the evidence in front of Knox proved that wasn’t true.
The tarpaulin across the windows started to flutter. Knox assumed it was just wind blowing up the side of the building, and he decided to give the bedroom a more thorough check to see what he could salvage, even if it was just a change of clothes. But before he turned away from the oven something slammed into the back of his head, knocking him out and sending him falling, face-first onto the kitchen floor.
The fluttering sheets hadn’t been caused by the wind but by someone else silently pulling apart the tarpaulin across the door and bringing more fresh air into the apartment.
The man had been waiting all night and day for someone to visit Knox’s flat. After the fire brigade and police had left, he’d taken up his position on one of Kemp House’s unoccupied lower floors. He’d spent all night peering through the small window in the door to the building’s central staircase. Then, when the lift was turned back on in the morning, he’d turned his attention to its display panel and waited for it to tell him someone was going up to the top floor. When it finally had, ten minutes ago, he’d made his way up the stairs and into Knox’s flat.
He pulled a roll of thick duct tape from his pocket, and used it to bind the unconscious Knox’s wrists and ankles before he dragged him into his bedroom and up onto the bed. He ran several long lengths of tape across Knox’s chest and thighs, holding him in place. Then he cut off another strip to cover his mouth. His instructions weren’t to kill Knox, just to make sure he couldn’t leave or call for help. He didn’t know if someone else was going to execute him or if he was just going to be left to die slowly and alone in the flat. And he didn’t care – it wasn’t his job or his problem.