Private Rome

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I was alone in a room full of strangers. They all knew who I was, but only a handful of them were familiar to me. I guess that’s why I was there. A curiosity, a minor celebrity, someone to draw a crowd. Starting a new overseas office was always exciting and I’d never missed a launch, but there was more at stake now. My exploits in Delhi, Berlin, Moscow and elsewhere had given me a degree of notoriety in law-enforcement and intelligence circles and I felt I had a reputation to live up to. Matteo Ricci, the former City of Rome police inspector I’d hired to start the Private Rome office, had been busy promoting me and the detective agency to Rome’s rich, powerful and influential citizens.

Matteo, a personable man in his mid-thirties with an impressive track record as a cop, had spent the entire evening at my side, introducing me to a succession of potential clients. Roman entrepreneurs, politicians, clergy, journalists, police officers, lawyers, bankers... a blur of faces atop interchangeable tuxedos or glamorous cocktail dresses. I would only be able to put a handful of names to faces, but that wasn’t my job. Matteo knew who these people were and would follow up when the office was fully running.

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