Princess: A Private Novel (Private #14)(14)

Morgan had no concrete idea. He only knew that, in a missing-persons case, time was everything.

And theirs was running out.





Chapter 22


PETER KNIGHT RUBBED at his eyes. It had been a long night, and the stress of having to deliver bad news to a family member always sapped his energy levels. Now he was in Hooligan’s lab, and hours of staring at bright computer screens was threatening to turn his eyes the color of tomatoes.

“I don’t know how you can look at these all day,” he said to the man beside him.

On the screens in front of them were long lists of numbers, files, and all kinds of digital code that Knight could only guess at. He was an intelligent man, but Hooligan’s explanations went over his head.

The men—mostly Hooligan, Knight admitted to himself—were looking into the digital records of Sir Tony Lightwood. As next of kin, Eliza had granted them permission, and now they were searching the man’s digital footprints for anything that could be useful—contacts, payments, patterns. In the modern world, it is impossible to live a life without leaving a trail of digital data behind, and Hooligan followed the path like a bloodhound. It was down to him to find the patterns in the data, and it was what he was most brilliant at.

“Here’s another one.” Hooligan pointed at the screen.

Knight leaned forward. He was looking at a receipt. It was the sixth one they’d found for the same boutique hotel—the Mistral in Kensington.

“Four hundred quid a night?” Hooligan snorted at the price. “Do they pay someone to sleep for you?”

“It’s another Wednesday,” Knight noted. “They’ve all been Wednesdays.” Then something in what Hooligan had said triggered a thought in his mind. “Do you think you can access their CCTV footage from those nights?”

“You mean steal it?” Hooligan exclaimed in mock horror. “Yeah, no problem. You’re the boss. I was just following orders, your honor, that was all…”

It took Hooligan less than twenty minutes to find what he was looking for. “Didn’t even have to do anything illegal.” He shrugged. “The Mistral needs to fire whoever runs their security. OK, here it is.”

CCTV footage came up onto one of Hooligan’s screens. Using the check-in time shown on the receipts, they were able to quickly find Sir Tony’s arrival. For Knight it was a bizarre, eerie feeling to see the now-dead man run up the steps, all smiles as he shook the hand of the hotel’s porter. That he could go from this bag of joy to dead by his own hand within weeks…

“I’ll take close-ups and screenshots of everyone who enters,” Hooligan told him, freezing the frame on a pair of wealthy-looking men. “Who are you expecting?” the East Ender asked, stopping the film to screenshot the next person.

Knight opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out.

Because on the screen was the face of Sophie Edwards.





Chapter 23


THE RANGE ROVER moved at speed along the winding Welsh roads.

“You know we have speed limits here?”

Jack Morgan ignored Sharon Lewis’s comment.

Peter Knight’s caller ID appeared on the car’s system.

“Peter. What’s the ETA on the chopper?” Morgan asked.

“Thirty minutes, Jack, but I’m not calling about that. Am I on speaker?”

“You are.”

“Then you may want to take me off.”

Morgan looked for a quiet stretch of road to pull over. Leaving the engine running, he told Cook to get behind the wheel. “If you see that black BMW, hit the horn.” He left the back door wide open so he could jump inside if they needed to make a quick escape.

He walked away from the car and held his phone to his ear. “What is it, Peter?”

When Knight told him about who had followed Sir Tony into the plush London hotel, Morgan thought that he’d misheard.

“Sophie Edwards,” Knight confirmed. “We went over the footage for every night Sir Tony stayed there. Sophie arrives after him within thirty minutes, every time. We even checked the nights that Sir Tony wasn’t a guest. There’s no sign of her unless he’s there.”

Morgan thought over the inevitable conclusion. “It has to be her. She’s our blackmailer.”

“I agree,” Knight told him. “There are seven instances. It isn’t a coincidence.”

“And she’s been missing longer than Sir Tony’s been dead. He killed her then couldn’t live with the guilt.”

“Ties up nicely, doesn’t it?” Knight agreed.

Morgan looked out over the rolling hills and mountains. The highest of them was now in cloud. The rain was coming. A British summer could never be perfect.

And neither could a crime.

“I don’t know, Peter. Sophie graduated with a first from the London School of Economics. If she was a prostitute, why? She could have been making an easy six figures with that education.”

“She could,” Knight agreed. “And then there’s the shooting.”

“Exactly.” Morgan’s thoughts were gathering speed. “If Sir Tony is responsible for her disappearance, then how is he sending shooters after the investigators from the other side of the grave?”