The case of Sir Tony Lightwood troubled him. Now that there seemed to be an irrefutable link between Sir Tony and Sophie Edwards, Knight was trying to decide if there could be a reasonable explanation for why both people kept appearing within thirty minutes of each other at the same hotel. If not, were both of Private London’s major cases actually one?
He shook his head, thinking it over from the beginning. Sir Tony was wealthy; Sir Tony stayed at the Mistral hotel on seven Wednesday nights; Sir Tony was blackmailed; Sir Tony killed himself.
Then there was Sophie. She graduated from LSE before becoming something of a party girl. She had arrived within thirty minutes of Sir Tony during each of his visits. She had been missing for days, but it was impossible to know exactly for how long—Private’s canvassing of friends, family and social media could only make a vague estimate, which put it around the same time as Sir Tony’s suicide.
If Sophie Edwards was Sir Tony’s blackmailer, he could have killed her before taking his own life in remorse. That was possible, but why then the attempt on Morgan’s life? Who could have arranged the hit on Sir Tony’s behalf?
Then there was the question of why Sophie had turned to prostitution and blackmail, if indeed that was the case. At least Knight had been able to make some headway there: despite graduating as a promising student, Sophie had never stuck at any of the high-paying positions she had landed, her lifestyle getting in the way of doing the job. The salaries she’d been offered by companies had gradually diminished as she bounced from one hedge fund or financial institution to the next. As she’d become more and more embedded in London’s high-society party scene, it was very likely that Sophie’s expenditure had been outstripping her income. She wouldn’t be the first smart girl to turn escort in the Big Smoke. She wouldn’t be the first to get greedy, either, and find ways to exploit the men who paid thousands for a night with her—and would pay anything to keep that secret.
The humanist in Knight wished it wasn’t that way, but the evidence was stacking up against the young girl. The CCTV footage had revealed Sophie leaving the Mistral hotel at eight every time she stayed. Sir Tony always left thirty minutes later. With some old-fashioned investigative backhanders to the hotel staff, Knight had discovered that there was nothing organized in the Mistral that would account for these regular timings—no backroom parties, poker games or secret clubs.
Knight rubbed at his face. He was tired. Tired physically, and tired of seeing good people turn bad. He was the rare kind of person with a clean soul, and the dishonesty that he witnessed on a daily basis weighed on him heavily. The only thing that could possibly weigh on him more would be doing nothing about it.
He would crack this case.
“You’re not gonna jump, are you?” The familiar voice came from behind him.
“Depends on what you’re here to tell me,” Knight replied. Hooligan walked over to him from the rooftop’s fire escape. “Did you finish the search of Sir Tony’s emails?” Knight had ordered the tech expert to comb through the data once Eliza Lightwood had given her permission.
The redhead smiled. “I have.”
“And?”
“Hold on to something, mate, because this one’s gonna blow your socks off.”
Chapter 27
JACK MORGAN WAS at the kitchen table with Lewis, looking over potential sites to lure out and trap his would-be assassins, when Peter Knight’s call came in. The American stepped outside to take it.
Across the room, Jane Cook looked up from her laptop, her eyes following Morgan’s every step until he was out of sight.
Sharon Lewis snorted.
Cook, frustrated by the case, couldn’t ignore it. “What’s your problem?”
“Women like you. You lot make it more difficult for those of us who aren’t willing to sleep our way around the office to further our career.”
Cook couldn’t care less about Lewis’s opinion, but the respect of her colleagues at Private mattered to her, and Lewis had touched a nerve, giving voice to what she feared others were thinking.
To avoid those thoughts she turned her attention back to the laptop in front of her, continuing her trawl through Sophie Edwards’ social media. In particular, her Facebook photo albums. Most of the photos were of hedonistic parties where Sophie seemed to be the life and soul. Men came and went, but none appeared regularly enough to suggest a boyfriend. It all painted a picture of a party life that rarely left London.
With one exception.
Between the photos of popping champagne bottles and rooftop bars, one location continued to show up throughout the years since Sophie had left Brecon—a beautiful waterfall surrounded by forest. Sophie was posed in front of the cascading white water in several pictures, each one chronicling the effect that drugs and alcohol were taking on her body, her ageing accelerated by her damaging lifestyle.
“She went downhill fast,” Lewis commented, looking over Cook’s shoulder.
“Do you know this location?” Cook asked, pointing to the waterfall. “It could be somewhere around here that she knew from her childhood.”
Lewis shook her head. “I don’t. But print me a copy and I’ll pass it around the team. A lot of the guys are into distance running and mountain bikes. Maybe they know it. If not, we can ask the farmers. You expect to find her there?”
Cook shook her head. “I doubt she’s gone missing because of a hiking accident, but what else do we have? If it’s close, it’s worth investigating.”
“You’re right. I’ll go get the printouts from the office.”
Lewis had only been gone a moment when Morgan re-entered the room. Cook was about to tell him of her small lead, but something on the American’s face told her that he had bigger news.
She wasn’t wrong.
“Peter and Hooligan found the origin of the blackmail note: Eliza Lightwood’s penthouse.”
Chapter 28
PETER KNIGHT NEEDED to clear his thoughts. His mind was in the trees, and he needed to pull back to see the forest. If there was one thing that helped him see clearly, it was the faces of his children.
Knight’s ten-year-old daughter accepted his video call. As always, the joy of seeing her was mixed with a pang of sadness and loss—she looked so like her mother.
“Hi, Isabel. Is your brother with you?”
Isabel called out for Luke, and her slightly younger sibling pushed his way onto the screen.
“Hi, Dad!” he bellowed.
“Hi, Luke. What have you guys been doing today? Did you have a good time at football?”
“No. We lost,” Luke replied.
“Winning isn’t everything,” Knight told his son. “It’s how hard you tried that counts.”
“Is that what it’s like in your job, Daddy?” Isabel asked.
Knight forced a smile, pretending he wasn’t involved in a career where losing often meant someone’s life. “I try my best, Isabel.”
And that was the truth—how could he do less? He loved his children with every ounce of his heart. They were growing fast—too fast—and soon they would be adults, unleashed into the big bad world. Peter Knight knew just how bad it could be, and he would do his utmost to make it safe for his own kids, and those of every other parent—no one should have to witness or suffer the kind of loss that he had seen.
“Are you OK, Dad?” Luke asked.
Knight smiled at his son’s perceptiveness. “You’d make a great policeman.”
“I want to be a stuntman!” Luke said instead.
“What happened to being a pilot?”
Luke thought on that. “A stunt pilot!” he declared.
I should just keep quiet, Knight said to himself. “I love you both,” he told his children, signing off.
With their goodbyes in his ears, Knight walked from his office to Hooligan’s lab. He saw Perkins, the royal liaison, napping on a couch in the shadows. Hooligan was, as usual, enraptured by the data on his screens.
“You look happy,” Hooligan said, turning to Knight. “Call with the kids?” he guessed, knowing the man well.
Knight nodded, then got to business. “Find anything on Eliza?”
The East Ender shook his head. “Not a banana. The only link between her and the blackmail is that it was sent from her home.”