Private Princess

Chapter 43

Light began to seep beneath struggling eyelids. It pained Peter Knight to open his eyes, but a voice in his head told him — screamed at him — to get up. He was alive, but he could still be in danger. He had to wake up, get up, and be ready to defend himself.

He rolled onto his front and felt a mouthful of hot blood gush over his lips and onto the floor. With his eyes open, he could see that he had been knocked to the ground of Mayoor Patel’s kitchen, but of the man there was no sign. Two broken pieces of ceramic lay beside him — the toilet’s cistern lid that must have been Patel’s weapon — and Knight knew he was lucky to be alive.

His head throbbing and mouth aching, he pushed himself up onto his knees, feeling his pockets. His phone was still there. The fact that Patel had left it suggested to Knight that he was out of his depth, acting on terrified instinct rather than cold-planned killing.

Knight hit his speed dial.

“Jack,” he croaked, wiping away blood with the back of his hand.

“Peter, are you OK?”

“Patel knocked me out,” Knight admitted, shame burning every inch of his skin. “I’m sorry, Jack. He got away.”

“Why would he attack you?” Jack Morgan asked.

Knight picked up the photograph of Sophie and Patel in front of the waterfall. “I think he killed Sophie. There was a photo of them together where you found her. It was turned facedown.”

“He couldn’t look at it,” Morgan guessed. “But why keep it?”

“Maybe because he didn’t want her friends to be suspicious if they came by?” Knight suggested. “Or he kept it because to hide the evidence would be an admission of his guilt he wasn’t willing to make, even to himself. He doesn’t seem like a cold-blooded killer, Jack. I think he killed Sophie, but I’m almost certain it was a crime of passion. When I saw him cornered by Eliza, there wasn’t an ounce of aggression in him. He was terrified.”

“Don’t sleep on this guy, Peter. For all we know, he thought you were dead when he put you down. We need to find this bastard, and soon.”

Knight knew the same, and began a frantic search of Patel’s home for clues. “Stay on the line while I take a look around,” he told Morgan.

“Go to his office, or whatever he has that passes as one,” Morgan instructed. “Look for a passport. We need to know if he’s trying to jump the country.”

Knight found the office at the top of the stairs. He began pulling out the drawers of Patel’s desk, dumping their contents out on the floor and searching through. “No sign of a passport.”

“Check his closet,” Morgan suggested, and Knight ran to the bedroom, flinging open a door to a walk-in wardrobe — there was a large section of clothes missing in a chunk from the railing, and more on the floor.

“He grabbed a load of clothes in a hurry,” Knight informed Morgan. “He’s not coming back. Can we stop him at the airports?”

“Not a chance. He’s only a suspect to us, not to the law. Either we stop him, Peter, or no one does.”

There was silence on the line as both men contemplated that likely and sickening possibility.

It was Knight who broke it.

“I’ve got an idea.”