Knight was two feet behind the Private New York operator when Mascolo jumped over a glass cocktail table and up onto the back of a plush grey sofa set against the bar’s west wall. As Knight tried to climb up beside Mascolo, he saw to his surprise that the American was armed.
Gun laws in the UK were very strict. Knight had had to jump through two years of hoops in order to get his licence to carry a firearm.
Before he could think any more about it, Mascolo shot through the window. The gun sounded like a cannon in that marble and glass room. Real hysteria swept the bar now. Knight spotted the shooter in the middle of the cul-de-sac on Harding Street, face obscured but plainly a woman. At the sound of Mascolo’s shot she twisted, dropped and aimed in one motion, an ultra-professional.
She fired before Knight could and before Mascolo could get off another round. The bullet caught the Private New York agent through the throat, killing him instantly. Mascolo dropped back off the sofa and fell violently through the glass cocktail table.
The shooter was aiming at Knight now. He ducked, raised his pistol above the sill and pulled the trigger. He was about to rise when two more rounds shattered the window above him.
Glass rained down on Knight. He thought of his children and hesitated a moment before returning fire. Then he heard tyres squealing.
Knight rose up to see the shooter on a jet-black motorcycle, its rear tyre smoking and laying rubber in a power drift that shot her around the corner onto the Strand, heading west and disappearing before Knight could shoot.
He cursed, turned and looked in shock at Mascolo, for whom there was no hope. But he heard Pope cry: ‘Guilder’s alive, Knight! Where’s that ambulance?’
Knight jumped off the couch and ran back through the shouting and the gathering crowd towards the crumpled form of Richard Guilder. Pope was
kneeling at his side amid a puddle of champagne and a mass of blood, ice and glass.
The financier was breathing in gasps and holding tight to his upper stomach while the blood on his shirt turned darker and spread.
For a moment, Knight had an unnerving moment of déjà vu, seeing blood spreading on a bed sheet. Then he shook off the vision and got down next to Pope.
‘They said there’s an ambulance on the way,’ the reporter said, her voice strained. ‘But I don’t know what to do. No one here does.’
Knight tore off his jacket, pushed aside Guilder’s hands and pressed the coat to his chest. Marshall’s partner peered at Knight as if he might be the last person he ever saw alive, and struggled to talk.
‘Take it easy, Mr Guilder,’ Knight said. ‘Help’s on the way.’
‘No,’ Guilder grunted softly. ‘Please, listen …’
Knight leaned close to the financier’s face and heard him whisper a secret hoarsely before paramedics burst into the Lobby Bar. But as Guilder finished his confession he just seemed to give out.
Blood trickled from his mouth, his eyes glazed, and he slumped like a puppet with its strings cut.
Chapter 26
A FEW MINUTES later, Knight stood on the pavement outside One Aldwych, oblivious to patrons hurrying past him to the restaurants and theatres. He was transfixed by the sight and sound of the wailing ambulance speeding Guilder and Mascolo to the nearest hospital.
He remembered standing on another pavement late at night almost three years before, watching a different ambulance race away from him, its siren’s fading cry accompanying a feeling of misery that still had not lifted entirely for him.
‘Knight?’ Pope said. She’d come up behind him.
He blinked and noticed the double-decker buses braking and taxis honking and people hurrying home all around him. Suddenly he felt disjointed in much the same way that he had on that long-ago night when he’d watched the other ambulance speed away from him.
London goes on, he thought. London always went on even in the face of tragedy and death, whether the victim was a corrupt hedge fund manager or a bodyguard or a young—
A pair of fingers appeared in front of his nose. They clicked and he looked round, startled. Karen Pope was looking at him in annoyance. ‘Earth to Knight. Hello?’
‘What is it?’ he snapped.
‘I asked you if you think Guilder will make it?’
Knight shook his head. ‘No. I felt his spirit leave him.’
The reporter looked at him sceptically. ‘What do you mean, you felt it?’
Knight sighed softly before replying: ‘That’s the second time in my life I’ve had someone die in my arms, Pope. I felt it the first time, too. That ambulance might as well slow down. Guilder is as dead as Mascolo is.’