‘Doesn’t make it any better though.’
‘No, I wouldn’t think that it would,’ said Ramouter as he rubbed his right ear. ‘But look at her. Look at your daughter. She knows that she’s safe with you and don’t forget that I’ve got your back. I’m your eyes and ears too. It’s my job to see the stuff that you can’t.’
Henley fought back the tears. Ramouter’s dedication to not only her but her family was a testament to how far they’d come since first meeting. She looked at Emma in the photograph and was immediately taken back to the moment when she’d asked Stanford to be her godfather. The tears burned again. She trusted Stanford to take care of her daughter if anything happened to her but yet she hadn’t entrusted him with her discovery that Rhimes had been murdered. Henley turned her back to the noticeboard, wiped her eyes and took a breath, grounding herself and mentally locking her emotions away. She looked around the room, her eyes stopping on the tight purple buds of the orchid plant on the windowsill; flowers that Kaiden Longley would never see bloom.
‘Why kill him?’ Henley asked as she and Ramouter walked back towards her car. ‘Someone he knew killed him but why?’
‘There’s only one answer,’ said Ramouter. ‘Iron Shadow, well what’s left of them, discovered he was talking to us. If they were able to track Fox-Carnell it’s more than possible they were keeping an eye on him.’
‘But Kaiden Longley didn’t talk to us. He talked to Ezra. If the remaining members of Iron Shadow were following Kaiden and saw the two of them together, they’ll be asking themselves: what did Kaiden tell Ezra. How much does Ezra know?’
‘Do you think we need to ask the guvnor to do more than just pick Ezra up in the morning?’
‘Most definitely,’ said Henley. ‘It’s clear that these people have an agenda. They wanted to frame Kaiden Longley,’ said Henley as she got into her car and started the engine. ‘You saw that flat. They left everything upstairs, all the photographs. Implicating Kaiden Longley and only him.’
‘That doesn’t mean they’re going to stop though,’ said Ramouter as the black body bag containing Kaiden Longley was wheeled towards the open doors of the private ambulance. ‘These are people who didn’t even stop when half of their crazy group was put in prison and for whatever reason they moved to a different city.’
‘No, you’re right,’ said Henley as she did a U-turn and drove through the estate. ‘Whether they find someone new to take Kaiden’s place or they just stick with who they’ve got. They’re not going to stop.’
48
‘Are you sure that pushing this Rhimes conspiracy theory is a good idea? Because if you ask me—’
‘It’s not a conspiracy theory and I wasn’t exactly asking you, Rob,’ said Henley. It should have been a normal Saturday afternoon, preparing for a children’s Halloween party, but she’d woken up to a message from Chris Snyder. She’d thought the mundane activity of sorting out the laundry would settle her nerves, but she’d become more anxious with each passing minute. She’d picked up her phone twice to cancel her meeting with Chris but that would have meant breaking her promise to Eloise. Henley had never been a woman known for breaking her word and she had no intention of starting now.
‘Because if you ask me,’ Rob continued as he slammed the dishwasher door shut. ‘It’s not. If what you told me is right, if what Linh has told you is right, you’re placing yourself in danger.’
‘I’ve been placing myself in danger for over ten years. The first time I went out on independent patrol I was attacked by a seventy-eight-year-old woman in Sainsbury’s who’d stolen six bottles of Johnnie Walker.’
‘You being hit with an umbrella by Supergran is not the same thing as you chasing after people who may have killed not just your boss, Anj, but your friend. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve watched you asleep in bed and told myself it’s a miracle you’re still here, especially after—’
‘Don’t say his name. I don’t need to be reminded of what I’ve been through, what I’ve endured. I see my scars every single day.’
Rob leaned his head back and exhaled loudly as the sound of Emma screeching in the living room with her cousins and Ramouter’s son, Ethan, filtered through the house.
‘I see your scars too,’ he said.
Henley looked down at her hands and saw that she’d been twisting the tea towel in her hands so tightly that it resembled a line of rope.
‘I can’t not do this,’ she said. ‘I spent a lot of time trying not to feel anything when I got the call that Rhimes was gone. If I didn’t feel it, then I could convince myself that it hadn’t happened but then that switched to anger. As weird as this sounds, I was angrier about Rhimes than I was with my mum.’
Henley paused as she felt her eyes burn with tears. She’d resisted everyone’s – Rob, her brother, dad and her therapist – efforts to drag her out of the dark abyss of grief. The only person who’d found a way to reach her was Pellacia.
‘Mum was sick. I didn’t want to admit that, but I knew she was going to die but Rhimes wasn’t sick,’ Henley said.
‘There’s nothing I can say that will change your mind is there?’ asked Rob as he pulled Henley towards him. She could feel the muscles in his chest flex and contract as he slowed his breathing. An attempt to lower the temperature of his frustrations.
‘I love you’ he said. ‘And I hate that I can’t protect you.’
‘Rob. I don’t—’
‘You may not need me to protect you but that’s how I feel and I also know that I’ll lose you if I try to control you. So, all I can do is remind you that I love you and will never stop worrying about you.’
Henley squeezed her eyes shut but the photograph of Fox-Carnell watching her and Emma burned brighter in her mind. She pulled away from Rob as her phone beeped with a message.
She picked up her phone. ‘It’s Chris. He’s running ten minutes late.’
‘I really do wish you would reconsider,’ Rob said. He cocked his head in the direction of the living room.
