Private Princess

Chapter 15

Peter Knight put his phone away and poured himself another coffee. Despite having a major investigation under way, he was still responsible for the running of Private London, and so he was casting his eye over the agency’s ongoing tasks when a call came through from Hooligan’s lab. He let it go unanswered. Instead, he ran down to the facility.

“You cracked it?” he asked as he entered the lab, certain the call would be to signal the successful decoding of the USB drive.

“Cracked it?” Hooligan replied. “I’m a delicate instrument, Peter, not a hammer. I slipped inside that code like a Navy SEAL.”

Knight listened patiently as Hooligan spent the next two minutes telling him that the encryption would have collapsed in on itself and wiped the data clean had he come at it like “a bone-headed Neanderthal.”

“Nothing but class and finesse here,” Hooligan concluded.

“You have stains on your shirt,” Knight smirked, proud of his technician.

“That was Perkins’ fault!” Hooligan shouted. “He told me Millwall would win the FA Cup this year and I spat me brew out!”

Knight began to laugh, but the sound died in his throat as Hooligan tapped at his keyboard and the contents of the USB stick flashed up onto a big screen.

“Not good, is it?” Hooligan said.

Knight shook his head. “No, it’s not.”

“It gets worse.”

Hooligan hit play on a video. Knight’s jaw dropped.

Revealed on the screen, in graphic detail, was the reason for Sir Tony’s death.