Chapter 6
The security control room was thick with the smell of stale coffee and tension and the low hum of equipment that never slept.
Someone had brought in a tray of mugs and biscuits that no one had touched.
The fluorescent lights cast their flat, unforgiving glare over the table and the faces and the maps.
The monitors on the far wall cycled through camera feeds from the estate perimeter: the gates, the service roads, the empty bridle path where Florence had been that morning. Empty. Everything was empty.
Erin stood at the head of the situation table with her arms folded, her damaged hand throbbing inside the sleeve of her jacket where she'd wrapped a bandage around her knuckles without bothering to clean them properly.
The blood had dried brown on the fabric.
She didn't care. There were things that mattered and things that didn't, and a bandage fell firmly into the second category.
Vic sat at the far end of the table. She'd changed out of her breeches and boots and into jeans still paired with the pink knitwear jumper, and without the boots she looked smaller, diminished, her long light brown hair hanging limp around her face.
Her eyes were bloodshot and she kept pressing her fingertips against the plaster on her cheek as though the pain grounded her.
She hadn't eaten. She hadn't spoken unless spoken to.
The loud, colourful, sweary Vic who filled rooms with her personality had contracted into someone quiet and grey and uncertain, and a part of Erin recognised that she'd done this.
The words she'd thrown at Vic in this room hours earlier had hit hard, and Vic was still carrying the bruises.
Good, said the vicious part of her brain. The part that was running on rage and terror and no sleep.
Not good, said the rest of her. But that part was quieter right now.
Helena Ward stood at the monitor bank, her red hair pulled tight, her uniform as crisp as ever despite the hours that had passed.
She was coordinating with the team in London via a secure video link, her voice a steady stream of updates and instructions.
Erin had been watching her since the crisis began.
Helena was composed, professional, efficient.
She answered questions directly and volunteered information without being asked.
She was, by all observable measures, doing her job exceptionally well.
Erin didn't trust her gut when it came to Helena. Her gut had too many other things to process right now. So she was watching instead. Filing.
"Walk me through it again," Erin said. "From the beginning. Both of you."
Vic flinched. "Erin, I've already—"
"Again."
Vic took a breath. Her hands were flat on the table, fingers spread, and she spoke in a voice that was carefully controlled.
"Florence and I left the stables at approximately ten-forty.
Jennings followed on the grey mare. We took the south bridle path into the woodland.
Florence was on Percy. We were walking, not trotting.
I wanted her to warm up properly before we picked up the pace. "
"How far into the woods?"
"About fifteen minutes. Maybe a mile. We'd just passed the stream crossing when the car appeared on the service road ahead of us, the section that runs parallel to the bridle path through the south woodland. It pulled over and the driver got out."
"Describe him."
"Male. White. Average height, average build.
Dark cap, high-vis vest, dark jacket underneath.
I couldn't see his face properly. The cap was pulled low and he kept his head slightly turned.
He was polite. Professional. His voice was calm, no accent I could place.
He said there'd been a change of schedule and that Princess Florence was needed back at the house immediately.
He showed Jennings a radio, or something that looked like a radio, and said he'd been dispatched by the control room. "
"And Jennings didn't challenge any of this."
"No." Vic's voice went thin. "He checked the car's credentials: windscreen sticker, plates, the driver's ID badge.
Everything matched. Jennings said he'd ride back with Florence in the car and escort her to the house.
He guided Florence off Percy and put her in the back seat.
She waved at me." Vic's voice broke. "She waved and said she'd see me after lunch. "
Erin closed her eyes briefly. Florence waving from the back of a car that was about to disappear with her. Trusting. Unconcerned. Because the adults around her were unconcerned, and eight-year-olds took their cues from the adults.
Helena stepped forward. "There was no dispatch order from the control room. No one here authorised a vehicle to intercept the riding party."
"Which means the radio was fake," Erin said. "Or hacked."
"Or the driver had access to our frequencies." Helena's voice was neutral. "Which brings me to something I need to share with you."
The room went still. Vic looked up. Even the officers at the monitors turned their heads.
Helena tapped her tablet and a series of documents appeared on the wall screen: security protocols, authorisation codes, a flow chart of digital access permissions that Erin recognised as the estate's vehicle clearance system.
"The credentials on the car were genuine.
Not forged. Genuine credentials, issued through a legitimate authorisation pathway.
When I traced the pathway, I found it was activated using a legacy access code that should have been decommissioned two years ago. "
"Whose code?"
"The code belonged to the private office of Prince Arthur."
The name landed in the room like a grenade with the pin pulled. Vic's head snapped up. The officers at the monitors exchanged glances. Erin felt the blood drain from her face and then rush back in a wave of heat that prickled along her scalp and down the back of her neck.
Arthur. Alexandra’s uncle. The late King George’s brother.
"There's a caveat," Helena said quickly. "The code is linked to his office, not to him personally. Anyone with access to his office systems could have used it. A PA, a secretary, a member of his household staff. There's no direct evidence that Arthur himself authorised or had knowledge of its use."
"Bollocks." The word was out of Erin's mouth and into the room.
She pushed off the table and paced to the far end of the room, her boots loud on the concrete floor.
"Arthur's legacy code, used to generate genuine credentials, to intercept the heir to the throne?
And we're supposed to believe he didn't know? "
"I'm telling you what the evidence shows, ma'am."
"The evidence shows that my daughter was kidnapped using the private authorisation pathway of a man who has spent the last twenty years trying to destroy my wife.
" Erin spun back to face Helena, and she could feel the rage building now, the hot, dark pressure that had been simmering since Vic burst through the terrace door.
It was rising from somewhere deep in her chest and it was filling her head with a clarity that was almost violent.
"Arthur endorsed Lord Hugo. Arthur worked with Cecilia to deliver a million pounds in cash to to bribe me into leaving Alexandra.
Arthur has been suspected of involvement in at least two previous plots against the Crown.
His authorisation pathway was used to create the credentials that took my eight-year-old daughter, and you're standing there telling me you can't prove he knew? "
Helena's jaw tightened. A muscle moved beneath the skin, the only sign that the captain's professional composure was costing her anything.
"I'm telling you that we need to be careful.
Accusing a senior member of the royal family without proof would create a constitutional crisis on top of a kidnapping investigation. "
"I don't care about constitutional crises. I care about Florence."
"And the best way to find Florence is to follow the evidence, not the anger."
Erin stared at her. Helena held her gaze, steady and unblinking, and for a moment the two women were locked in a silent contest of wills.
Helena was right. Erin knew she was right.
The professional part of her brain, the part that had been trained for exactly this kind of situation, knew that leaping to conclusions was dangerous, that assumptions could blind you to the real threat, that you followed the evidence and let it lead you to the truth.
But the mother part of her brain was screaming.
"I want financial audits," Erin said, her voice low and controlled.
"Every royal trust connected to Arthur. Every account, every transaction, every transfer over ten thousand pounds in the last twelve months.
I want to know who he's been meeting, where he's been travelling, what phones he's been using.
He's been kept out of the public eye since his last betrayal but that doesn't mean he's been idle. Arthur doesn't do idle. He schemes."
Helena nodded. "I'll coordinate with the treasury office and MI5 financial intelligence."
"And I want his staff interviewed. Every one of them.
PA, secretary, driver, housekeeper. Anyone who could have accessed that code.
And I want to know about his recent relationship with Cecilia: what communications have passed between them, how often they meet, whether anyone in his household has connections to anyone in hers. "
"Understood."
"One more thing." Erin looked at Helena steadily.
"The camera at the north-east gate. The one that was offline for maintenance during the exact window the car left the estate.
I want to know who serviced it, who scheduled the service, and whether there's any connection between the maintenance contractor and anyone in Arthur's network. "
Helena made a note on her tablet without comment.