“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.