CHAPTER 1
THURSDAY, JULY 26, 2012, 9:24 A.M.
IT WAS MAD-DOG hot for London. Peter Knight's shirt and jacket were drenched with sweat as he sprinted north on Chesham Street past the Diplomat Hotel and skidded around the corner toward Lyall Mews in the heart of Belgravia, home to some of the most expensive real estate in the world.
Don't let it be true, Knight screamed internally as he entered the mews. Dear God, don't let it be true.
Then he saw a pack of newspaper reporters gathering at the yellow tape of a London Metropolitan Police barricade that blocked the road in front of a cream-colored Georgian-style townhome. Knight lurched to a stop, feeling like he was going to retch up the eggs and bacon he'd had for breakfast.
What would he ever tell Amanda?
Before Knight could compose his thoughts or still his stomach, his cell phone rang. He snatched it from his pocket without looking at caller ID.
"Knight," he managed to choke out. "That you, Jack?"
"No, Peter, it's Nancy," the voice replied in an Irish brogue. "Isabel has come down sick."
"What?" he groaned. "No...I just left the house an hour ago."
"She's running a temperature," the full-time nanny insisted. "I just took it."
"How high?"
"One hundred. She's complaining about her stomach, too."
"Lukey?"
"He seems fine," she said. "But—"
"Give them both a cool bath, and call me back if Isabel's temp hits a hundred and one," Knight said. He snapped the phone shut, swallowed the bile burning at the back of his throat.
A wiry man about six feet tall, with an appealing face and light brown hair, Knight had once been a special investigator assigned to the Old Bailey, home of England's Central Criminal Court. Two years ago, however, he joined the London office of Private International at twice the pay and prestige. Private has been called the Pinkerton Agency of the twenty-first century, with offices in every major city in the world staffed by top-notch forensic scientists, security specialists, and investigators such as Knight.
Compartmentalize, he told himself. Be professional. But this felt like the straw that would break the camel's back. Knight had already endured too much grief and loss, both personally and professionally. Just the week before, his boss, Dan Carter, and three of his colleagues had perished in a plane crash over the North Sea that was still under investigation. Could he live with another death?
Pushing that question and his daughter's illness to one side, Knight forced himself to hurry on through the sweltering heat toward the police barrier, giving the Fleet Street crowd a wide berth, and in so doing spotted Billy Casper, a Scotland Yard inspector he'd known for fifteen years.
He went straight to Casper, a blockish man with a pockmarked face who scowled the second he saw Knight. "Private's got no business in this, Peter."
"If that's Sir Denton Marshall dead in there, then Private does have business in this, and I do, too," Knight shot back forcefully. "Personal business, Billy. Is it Sir Denton?"
Casper said nothing.
"Is it?" Knight demanded.
Finally the inspector nodded, but he wasn't happy about it, and asked suspiciously, "How are you and Private involved?"
Knight stood there a moment, feeling lambasted by the news and wondering again how the hell he was going to tell Amanda. Then he shook off the despair and said, "The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games is Private London's client. Which makes Sir Denton Private's client."
"And you?" Casper demanded. "What's your personal stake in this? You a friend of his or something?"
"Much more than a friend. He was engaged to my mother."
Casper's hard expression softened a bit and he chewed at his lip before saying, "I'll see if I can get you in. Elaine will want to talk to you."
Knight felt suddenly as if invisible forces were conspiring against him.
"Elaine caught this case?" he said, wanting to punch something. "You can't be serious."
"Dead serious, Peter," Casper said. "Lucky, lucky you."
CHAPTER 2
CHIEF INSPECTOR ELAINE Pottersfield was one of the finest detectives working for the Metropolitan Police, a twenty-year veteran of the force with a prickly, know-it-all style that got results. Pottersfield had solved more murders in the past two years than any other inspector at Scotland Yard. She was also the only person Knight knew who openly despised his presence.
An attractive woman in her forties, the inspector always put Knight in mind of a borzoi, with her large round eyes, aquiline face, and silver hair that cascaded about her shoulders. When he entered Sir Denton Marshall's kitchen, Pottersfield eyed him down her sharp nose, looking ready to bite at him if she got the chance.
"Peter," she said coldly.
"Elaine," Knight said.
"Not exactly my idea to let you into the crime scene."
"No, I imagine not," replied Knight, fighting to control his emotions, which were heating up by the second. Pottersfield always seemed to have that effect on him. "But here we are. What can you tell me?"
The Scotland Yard inspector did not reply for several moments. Then she finally said, "The maid found him an hour ago out in the garden, or what's left of him, anyway."
Flashing on memories of Sir Denton, the learned and funny man he'd come to know and admire over the past two years, Knight's legs felt wobbly, and he had to put his vinyl-gloved hand out on the counter to steady himself. "What's left of him?"
Pottersfield grimly gestured at the open French door.
Knight absolutely did not want to go out into the garden. He wanted to remember Sir Denton the last time he'd seen him, two weeks before, with his shock of startling white hair, scrubbed pink skin, and easy, infectious laugh.
"I understand if you'd rather not," Pottersfield said. "Inspector Casper said your mother was engaged to Sir Denton. When did that happen?"
"New Year's past," Knight said. He swallowed and moved toward the door, adding bitterly, "They were to be married on Christmas Eve. Another tragedy. Just what I need in my life, isn't it?"
Pottersfield's expression twisted in pain and anger, and she looked at the kitchen floor as Knight went by her and out into the garden.
Outside, the temperature was growing hotter. The air in the garden was still and stank of death and gore. On the flagstone terrace, five quarts of blood—the entire reservoir of Sir Denton's life—had run out and congealed around his decapitated corpse.
"The medical examiner thinks the job was done with a long curved blade that has a serrated edge," Pottersfield said.
Knight again fought off the urge to vomit. He tried to take the entire scene in, to burn it into his mind as if it were a series of photographs and not reality. Keeping everything at arm's length was the only way he knew to get through something like this.
Pottersfield said, "And if you look closely, you'll see some of the blood's been sprayed back toward the body with water from the garden hose. I'd expect the killer did it to wash away footprints and such."
Knight nodded, and then, by sheer force of will, moved his attention beyond the body, deeper into the garden, bypassing forensics techs gathering evidence from the flower beds and turning to a crime-scene photographer snapping away near the back wall.
Knight skirted the corpse by several feet and from that new perspective saw what the photographer was focusing on. It was from ancient Greece, and was one of Sir Denton's prized possessions: a headless limestone statue of an Athenian senator cradling a scroll and holding the hilt of a busted sword.
Sir Denton's head had been placed in the empty space between the statue's shoulders. His face was puffy, lax. His mouth was twisted to the left, as if he were spitting. And his eyes were open, dull, and, to Knight, shockingly forlorn.
Excerpted from the book PRIVATE GAMES by James Patterson and Mark Sullivan. Copyright © 2012 by James Patterson. Reprinted with permission of Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY. All rights reserved.
