Helena consulted her notes. "Eighty-one years old. Retired. Widower. Conservative peer in the Lords until he took voluntary retirement five years ago. Close friend of Prince Arthur's. They shoot together, attend the same clubs. His family has been in Arthur's circle for generations."
"Has he been interviewed?"
"Not yet. MI5 wants to watch him first. See if there's movement at the property before approaching directly."
Erin nodded. She understood the logic even as it grated against every instinct she had. Watching was slower than asking. But asking tipped your hand, and if Latimer was holding Florence then the last thing they wanted was for him to panic and move her before they were ready.
She turned back to the monitors. The camera feeds showed the estate perimeter: the gates, the service roads, the south woodland where Florence had been taken. She'd watched these feeds so many times that she could draw the layout from memory. The bend in the bridle path. The service road where the car had appeared. The stream crossing that Vic had mentioned. She kept expecting to see something she'd missed. A detail in the footage that would crack the whole thing open. But the footage was the same every time, and the car was the same, and the driver's face was hidden by the same cap, and Florence was in the same back seat waving the same goodbye.
That wave. Erin couldn't stop seeing it. The small hand raised, the casual confidence of a child who trusted the adults around her. She'd waved at Vic the way she waved at Erin every time she left for a meeting, an event, or the security office. The same uncomplicated faith that the person leaving would come back.
"Ma'am." One of the analysts, a young officer named Patel, called across the room. "We've got a hit on the Jersey mobile. It made three calls in the last twenty-four hours to a number in?—"
"Where?"
"Surrey. Different number to the Latimer landline, but the cell tower data places the handset within two miles of his property."
Erin's pulse kicked. Two miles. That wasn't proof. It wasn't even strong evidence. But it was the second thread pointing to the same corner of Surrey, and in this kind of investigation, two threads in the same direction meant something.
"Get everything you can on that second number," she said. "Owner, location history, call records. And flag it for Director Graves."
"Already done, ma'am."
She sat back in her chair and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. The headache that had been building since noon was now a steady pressure behind her temples, and her hand, the one she'd split open on the service yard wall, was aching with a deep, bruised throb that the painkillers barely touched. She'd changed the bandage that morning and the knuckles underneath were swollen and purple-black and two of the splits had reopened. She should probably see a doctor. She was not going to see a doctor.
The door to the control room opened and Alexandra stood in the frame. She was wearing a navy dress with flat shoes and her hair was loose around her shoulders and she looked like she hadn't slept, which was fair, because she probably hadn't. Her blue eyes found Erin's across the room and something in them, a tiredness that went deeper than sleep, a need that was bone-level, pulled at something deep inside Erin.
"Walk with me?" Alex said quietly.
Erin looked at the screens. At the data streaming in. At Patel and the other analysts bent over their terminals. Then she looked at her wife, who was standing in a doorway asking for twenty minutes of her time, and she stood up.
"Helena, you have the room."
They walked out through the side entrance and into the evening. The sun was low and golden, throwing long shadows across the lawn, and the air smelled of cut grass and the warm, sweet scent of the honeysuckle that grew along the garden wall. Dogs appeared immediately: two golden retrievers first, bounding across the lawn with the ecstatic enthusiasm of animals who had been waiting all day for someone to pay attention to them, and then the chocolate lab at a more dignified pace, and finally Audrey, who hauled herself up from whatever patch of warm ground she'd been occupying and lumbered over with the arthritic determination of an elderly dog who refused to be left out.
Erin took Alex's hand as they walked. The simple contact, palm against palm, fingers threaded together, the familiar weight of her wife's hand in hers, was the first moment of genuine quiet she'd had since dawn. The control room receded. The data, the feeds, the phone records, the two-mile radius around Latimer's property, all of it fell back, and for a few steps there was just the grass and the evening light and Alex beside her.
"Tell me," Erin said.
Alex didn't answer immediately. They walked in silence past the kitchen garden, where the lavender was throwing its scent into the warm air, and around the edge of the south lawn, where the children had been playing that afternoon. Frank's cricket bat was propped against the stone bench. One of Matilda's hair ribbons was caught in the grass.
"Cecilia came today," Alex said.
"I know. Julia told me."
"I let her in." A pause. "I know I said I wouldn't, but I needed to see her face when I asked about Arthur."
"And?"
"And she was perfect. The tears, the concern, the wounded innocence. Every line delivered with the precision of a woman who's been performing sincerity her whole life." Alex's voice was flat in a way that Erin recognised, the controlled monotone she used when the emotion underneath was too large to let through. "She said Arthur would never be involved. She said my mind was playing tricks. She said I was lashing out at the people who love me most."
"Your mind is not playing tricks."
"I know that. Here." Alex pressed her free hand against her sternum. "I know it here. But she's so good at it, Erin. She's so good at making me doubt what I know. Thirty seconds in a room with her and I start to think. What if I'm wrong? What if she's just a frightened grandmother and I'm the monster who turned her away? What if I've spent all these years building a villain out of a woman who's simply difficult?"
Erin stopped walking. She turned to face Alex and took both her hands. The golden retrievers circled them, tails wagging, oblivious to the conversation happening above their heads. Audrey sat heavily on the grass nearby and watched with her brown, patient eyes.
"You're not wrong," Erin said. Her voice was low and firm and carried the weight of absolute conviction, because this was one thing she knew with her whole body. "And you're not a monster. Cecilia offered me a million quid to leave you, Alex. She sat across a table from me and told me I was destroying the monarchy. She supported the man who assaulted you. Arthur's authorisation pathway was used to take our daughter. Your mind is not playing tricks. Your mother is playing tricks, and she's been playing them your entire life, and I will not let her make you doubt yourself. Not on my watch."
