Private Royals

Chapter 29

Inspector Elaine Pottersfield was a long-term servant of the Met, the service giving her a salty edge that had led to her blaming Peter Knight for the death of her beloved sister — Knight’s adored wife. It had taken the events of the London Olympics to reconcile the pair, and now Elaine was the doting aunt to Knight’s two children that he’d always wanted her to be. Early on a Saturday morning, she expected that her brother-in-law’s phone call would be an invitation to lunch, or perhaps to join him and the children in the park.

It wasn’t.

‘We’re in the shit,’ Knight told her over the phone whilst running at speed through the corridors of Private HQ.

‘Let’s hear it,’ Elaine said, switching from loving aunt to ice-cold detective in the blink of an eye.

‘There’s a flat-panel truck around Westminster with precious cargo. Either Jones Brothers signage or freshly painted over. We need it found.’

‘That’s not much to go on.’

‘I know,’ said Knight. ‘And we’ve got less than an hour to find it.’

‘Bloody hell, Peter! If you want me to work miracles, I need a little more information.’

‘You can narrow the radius down to one mile around Horse Guards.’

‘Horse Guards?’ Elaine asked. ‘Today’s Trooping the Colour. If there are lives at stake here, Peter, then you need to come clean — like right bloody now.’

‘One life,’ Knight confessed. ‘And if I thought a full blues-and-twos response was the best way to keep them alive, then you know that’s what I’d do, Elaine.’

There was a pause as his sister-in-law thought it over.

‘I’ll put out a call. Find and follow, no intervention.’

‘Thank you,’ Knight said and hung up the phone. He came to a halt at a desk to the rear of Private HQ’s large offices.

‘Can I help you, Mr Knight?’ the motor pool attendant asked.

‘Get me a bike,’ Knight told him. ‘A fast one.’