Private Princess

by James Patterson

  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.”

  “I can’t think of any good reason why she would blackmail her own father,” Knight mused.

  “Well, maybe because she knew it would push him into suicide. She’s an only child and next of kin. We’ve seen her dad’s financials. She’s about to be a very wealthy girl.”

  Knight shook his head. “She’s already a wealthy girl, Jez. We’ve seen her financials. She’s been making a killing since leaving university. And, more to the point,” he added, “if she was blackmailing him, why would she hire us to investigate it?”

  Hooligan looked over Eliza’s bank statements again. Sir Tony’s daughter had granted them full access in a move to show good faith and full cooperation. “Looks like Cambridge was the wrong choice for me.” The man laughed. “Should have gone to LSE.”

  Knight stopped dead in his tracks.

  “I said I should have gone to LSE,” Hooligan repeated, thinking his joke had fallen on deaf ears. “LSE. Eliza’s university. The London School of Economics.”

  Knight cursed himself for having taken so long to put the pieces together. “Eliza was at LSE?” he managed, trying to picture again the educational certificates that adorned the walls of her home.

  “Yeah,” Hooligan answered, wondering at Knight’s exasperated expression. “Graduated in 2011. Why?”

  Knight said nothing. He was too busy thinking over possibilities, plots, motivation, and murder.

  Because Eliza Lightwood was not the only promising young lady to graduate from LSE in 2011.

  There was another he knew of, and her name was Sophie Edwards.

  Chapter 29

  KNIGHT RAN FROM Private’s building to Eliza Lightwood’s home. The London traffic was heavy, and he wanted answers without delay. The gray clouds had finally delivered on their threat and rain was falling. Knight drew stares as he weaved between umbrella-carrying pedestrians.

  He was soaked by the time he arrived at Eliza’s apartment complex. There was no way in without a code, but Knight’s disheveled state drew a compassionate look from the security guard who sat behind the building’s glass frontage. The man got up and shuffled to the door.

  “I’ve seen you enough times,” he told Knight, opening the door. “So much for summer, right?”

  “I know,” Knight agreed, rewarding the kind gesture with a smile. “I appreciate this. Thank you.”

  The security guard smiled back, glad that he could do a little to help someone’s day. Knight gave the man a parting wave and made his way to the elevators. After shaking his hair like a soaked dog, he knocked gently on Eliza’s door.

  There was no answer.

  He knocked again and again. No answer.

  Knight pulled out his phone. Eliza’s number was a fixture in his recent calls list. He hit it. It went straight to voicemail.

  He frowned. He tried again. Straight to voicemail.

  Knight looked at the apartment door’s lock. It was the Trilogy model that was popular in the homes of the wealthy. There was a slot for a key card, and then a pad for a code. He could only hope it wasn’t set up to require both.

  With nothing but intuition from his gut to guide him, Knight entered the birth date of Sir Tony Li
ghtwood.

  An LED flashed green, and the lock clicked open.

  Chapter 30

  THE RANGE ROVER made easy work of the forest tracks as Jane Cook drove them toward the location of Sophie Edwards’ waterfall photos. One of the royal residence’s cleaners, a Brecon Beacons local her entire life, had identified the spot, and now Jack Morgan guided them there with the use of an Ordnance Survey map.

  “Take this,” he told Lewis, seeing a call from Knight coming through and taking it on a headset. “Peter?”

  “Can I be overheard?” Knight asked.

  “No,” Morgan replied.

  His brow creased as Knight revealed that Sophie and Eliza had both attended the same university and graduated in the same year.

  “It’s not a big school, Jack. There’s a good chance they could have known each other.”

  “Is she with you?” Morgan asked.

  “No. Her phone’s going straight to voicemail. I’ve tried her offices, and she’s not there either.”

  Morgan ran a hand through his hair as he worked through it. “Sophie and Eliza were blackmailing him together,” Morgan concluded. “Where do you think she is now, Peter?”

  But there was no answer.

  The line was dead.

  “Dammit,” Morgan cursed, looking at his phone screen. “I’ve lost all service. Do you have anything on yours?” he asked the two women with him in the Range Rover.

  “Nothing,” Lewis replied. “We’re deep in the forest now, Morgan. Not LA.”

  Morgan held his reply.

  “I don’t know what you’re expecting to find here,” the Welshwoman said to no one in particular. “Needle in a bloody haystack.”

  “You could have stayed behind,” Cook answered, getting frustrated with the other woman’s negativity. “Or I can stop the car, and you can walk back?”

  “Someone has to look after you.”

  Something in Lewis’s reply put Morgan on edge. Unconsciously, he checked the knife that still resided in his boot, working it upward a little so that it was loose. It would take a second to draw it, and another second to use it. He wondered how fast Sharon Lewis was with the pistol, and if she had a round already chambered. If she was forced to draw back on the pistol’s top-slide first, he was certain that split second would cost the officer the fight.

  “We’re almost there,” Lewis said. “Pull up in that clearing.”

  Cook did as she was told, then opened the door. The sound of rushing water was stark against the otherwise still forest, and the ticking of the Range Rover’s cooling engine. As they exited the vehicle, Morgan made sure he mirrored Lewis’s movements, sliding from the back seat on the passenger side so that he was behind her, and close. Outside the car, the smell in the air was thick with the scent of damp earth.

  “Bloody perfect timing,” Lewis complained as thick blobs of rain began to penetrate the forest’s canopy. “Let’s get this over with before we get soaked.”

  “You’ve got the map,” Cook told her. “Lead on.”

  The police officer sighed, and made her way across the clearing to where a worn pathway led through the trees.

  The roar of water was growing louder. The sound of the waterfall was the only waypoint needed now.

  “I bloody hate the rain,” Lewis grumbled as she folded the map away, placing it inside her jacket. The shower had become a downpour, the rain bouncing from the forest floor and slapping at the leaves. What had been a quiet haven was fast becoming a cacophony—the rain even drowned out the sound of the waterfall. It made it hard for Morgan to gauge how close they were drawing, and so the cascading white waters were almost something of a surprise as they turned a corner of rocks and shrubs and saw nature’s marvel revealed ahead of them.

  But Jack Morgan was not looking at the waterfall, no matter how beautiful.

  He was looking at the body that was hanged beside it.

  Chapter 31

  SOPHIE EDWARDS’ BODY hung bloated and purple from a rope tied to a tree branch.

  “That’s her,” Lewis confirmed, without having been asked. “Looks like her tricks caught up with her.”

  Morgan turned to look at the police officer. “Her tricks?” he said evenly. “So you did know who she was, and what she was doing?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “And Sir Tony?”

  “Who?” the woman asked, her look convincing Morgan that she was either ignorant of the man and his connection to Sophie Edwards, or that she was an excellent liar.

  Cook was about to walk forward when Morgan gently grasped her elbow. “We need to leave the police a good crime scene. Or whatever’s left of one after this rain.”

  Cook nodded, understanding. “Such a waste,” she said, shaking her head. “She had so much going for her.”

  Morgan looked to his phone: there was no reception.

  “We should go back to the car,” Cook suggested. “Head back down the track until we get service.”

  “You go and call this in,” Morgan told her. “I’ll watch over the body.”

  But as Cook turned to go back up the trail, the crack of bullets crashed through the trees.

  Chapter 32

  MORGAN, COOK AND Lewis threw themselves to the ground within a half second of hearing the first round crack by. By the sound of the round’s low buzz, Morgan knew that the bullets were subsonic, and from a pistol. The fire was accurate, and so the firer must be extremely lucky, or within fifty meters.

  No—firers, Morgan corrected himself, hearing overlapping shots as broken branches and splinters fell down onto his head.

  “They’re over there!” Morgan said, calculating the location by observing the strike marks as the bullets thwacked into the trees.

  Lewis sprang up and half stumbled behind a small boulder, her feet slipping on the wet soil. The shooters saw her move and sparks flew up from the rock as rounds ricocheted from its surface.

  Morgan watched, heart in mouth, as Lewis raised herself into that fire and began to shoot double taps at their assailants. Thinking that her fire would distract them, he took the chance to bound into better cover, grabbing Cook by her jacket and pulling her with him as she scrabbled along on her hands.

  “Are you hit?” Morgan asked her.

  “I’m good,” she told him. Morgan felt his chest sag in relief.

  “Change position!” he shouted to Lewis, and the police officer ducked. Sure enough, a few rounds smacked just behind where her head had been.

  “Give me the gun!” Morgan called to her, crawling forward.

  “Fuck off!” Lewis snarled back, rising from her new cover to deliver two double taps, before dropping down again and scuttling into a new position. “This isn’t Hollywood—I don’t need the Americans to save me.”

  “Christ, she’s enjoying this.” Cook shook her head, crawling beside Morgan—without a weapon herself, the former soldier had never felt more vulnerable, or useless.

  “Bloody right I am!” Lewis shouted. “Fuck off back home!” she shouted over the rocks at the attackers.

  And perhaps they listened, because the echo of gunshots through the trees was steadily giving way to the hammer of the rain. Morgan looked through a hand-width gap between rocks and saw two silhouettes moving a hundred meters away through the foliage. They were not firing now, but one shape moved as the other held position and took aim. Either they’re military, Morgan thought, or they took the time to learn a killer’s profession.

  Lewis was looking over the sights of her pistol as Morgan reached her side.

  “This is gonna be a lot of bloody paperwork,” the police officer said, panting for breath.

  “Thank you,” Morgan told her, feeling guilty that he had ever doubted the woman. “And now, if it’s all right with you, officer, I’d like to go get these bastards.”

  Chapter 33

  JACK MORGAN’S BOOTS thumped into the wet dirt of the path as he ran back to the Range Rover. He was wary of an ambush, but the shooters had moved off i
n a different direction—Morgan reasoned that the angle meant they would reach the vehicle first. Cook was warning him that there could be a second group of shooters waiting at the vehicle, but Morgan was willing to take that risk—he had to. He had made sure that he was at the front, ahead of the only armed person in their team—if Morgan was wrong and there was a second ambush, then he would be the first one into it. It was a gamble, but every second bought the shooters time to escape.

  He saw the Range Rover through the trees and motioned for Lewis and Cook to stop as he ran on alone. Drawing closer, he could see that the vehicle’s tires had been slashed, but that fact gave him no concern—he had insisted that the Range Rover come with run-flats. Jack Morgan had learned the hard way how vulnerable tires can be, and how useless the rest of the vehicle becomes without them.

  “Come on!” he called, happy that the coast was clear.

  “Over there!” Cook pointed as she sprinted.

  Morgan turned to follow her indication, and spotting the blurred shape of a four-by-four moving two hundred yards to his right.

  “Get in! Let’s go!” he urged, jumping behind the wheel himself. Lewis piled into the passenger seat and Cook the rear. They had barely touched the seats before Morgan was gunning the engine and slewing forward through the wet muck of the clearing.

  “Jane, keep trying the phones!” Morgan instructed as he blasted the Range Rover through the narrow track between the trees. “Lewis, what’s your ammo count?”

  “Magazine and a half,” she told him. “Twenty-five rounds.”

  It would have to do. Ahead of them, on a parallel track, Morgan could see a black Land Rover Defender whipping through the branches. In that vehicle were at least two shooters—what was their ammo count?

  “Still nothing on the phones,” Cook announced, cursing as they hit a hard bump and her head bounced off Lewis’s headrest.

  “The tracks merge soon!” Lewis shouted, the Ordnance Survey map spread on her lap. “No more than half a K!”