Chapter 16
Someone had tipped them off.
The timeline was precise. Latimer's housekeeper had confirmed, under questioning, that a van had arrived at the property at approximately two in the morning, three hours before the rescue team's approach.
Two men had entered the house, collected the child, and left within fifteen minutes.
The housekeeper hadn't seen where they went.
She'd been told to stay in her room and she had, because she was a woman in her sixties who worked for a baron and did what she was told.
Two in the morning. The rescue had been planned at the control room briefing at twenty-two hundred hours.
The tactical deployment had been finalised by twenty-three hundred.
Between ten in the evening and two in the morning, four hours, someone had communicated the plan to Latimer, and Latimer had communicated it to whoever was holding the other end of the operation.
Four hours. The window was narrow. The pool of people who'd known the timing was small.
One of them was a traitor.
She'd slept for two hours. Two hours on a camp bed in the corner of the control room, her jacket balled under her head, her phone clutched in her hand in case something came in.
She'd dreamed of Florence, not the nightmare version, not the scenarios her mind constructed in the dark, but a gentle, ordinary dream.
Florence on the lawn with the dogs. Florence laughing.
The sound of her laughter, which was high and clear and full of delight.
Erin had woken with the sound still in her ears and the reality of the empty bedroom at Latimer Hall crushing down on her like rubble.
She hadn't called Alex. She should have.
She'd picked up the phone three times and put it down each time because she didn't know what to say.
I'm sorry I hung up on you. I'm sorry I couldn't come to the safe house.
I'm sorry I said "I have to go" when what I meant was "I can't feel this right now because if I feel it I'll break and breaking isn't something I can afford.
" The words were there but they wouldn't form, and the distance between what she wanted to say and what she could say was growing wider by the hour, and she hated herself for it but she couldn't stop it.
Focus. The leak. That was the thing that mattered right now. Find the leak, find Florence, then deal with everything else.
"I want the phone records for every person in this room," Erin said. "Personal devices, work devices, all of it. And I want the CCTV footage from the castle for last night: who left the building, who made calls, who was where between twenty-two hundred and oh-two hundred."
Helena looked up from her console. "That's a significant request, Ma'am. These are cleared MI5 personnel. Accessing their personal communications—"
"Someone in this room told Latimer we were coming.
Florence was moved three hours before the team went in.
The timing doesn't work unless the leak came from inside this briefing.
" Erin's voice was level. Cold. The voice she'd used in her protection days when an operation was compromised and there was no time for diplomacy.
"I'm not accusing anyone. I'm following the evidence.
And the evidence says that between ten last night and two this morning, someone communicated our plan to the target. "
Graves, on screen, nodded slowly. "She's right. The window is too tight for coincidence. I'll authorise the phone audit. Helena, coordinate with the technical team."
Helena's face showed nothing. "Yes, Director. I'll have the data within the hour."
Erin watched her. Helena Ward, who had run this security operation from the beginning.
Helena who had designed the protection protocols, who had been first on scene after the kidnapping, who had set up the control room and managed the surveillance and coordinated the intelligence gathering.
Helena who had been competent and professional and exactly the kind of steady, reliable officer you wanted running a crisis operation.
Helena who had been in every briefing. Who had known every detail of every plan.
Who had access to every piece of intelligence the operation had generated.
The thought that had been forming in the back of Erin's mind for twenty-four hours crystallised into something sharp and specific.
Hyzenthlay's voice came back to her. A whisper in a castle corridor the day before, small fingers tugging at her sleeve, hazel eyes serious and certain: I saw Captain Ward on the phone in the garden.
The day Florence was taken. She looked angry and she was talking very quietly and she kept looking around.
On the phone in the garden. The day Florence was taken. Not in the control room, where calls were logged. Not on a secure line, where conversations were recorded. In the garden, on a personal device, having a conversation she didn't want anyone to overhear.
Erin's heart rate spiked. She kept her face neutral.
She'd learned that skill decades ago: the ability to make a discovery and show nothing, to process devastating information while maintaining the blank, professional mask that kept people from knowing what you knew before you were ready to act on it.
She pulled up the CCTV footage from six days ago on her tablet.
Castle grounds. Camera seven, the one that covered the south lawn and the kitchen garden.
She scrubbed forward through the morning, the familiar accelerated footage of staff and security and the dogs crossing the lawn in jerky fast-forward.
At ten fourteen, she found it. Helena Ward, in uniform, standing in the kitchen garden beside the lavender beds, her back to the camera, her phone pressed to her ear.
The call lasted four minutes and seventeen seconds.
Helena's free hand was clenched at her side.
Her posture was rigid, agitated, not the posture of someone taking a routine call.
Four minutes. The morning Florence was taken. Before the riding trip. Before the kidnapping.
Erin scrubbed forward again. Day four. The evening before the Latimer briefing.
Twenty-one twelve, forty-eight minutes before the briefing began.
Helena, outside the castle side entrance, phone to her ear, pacing.
Another call. Three minutes and nine seconds.
This time Helena's hand went to her forehead, pressing against it in the gesture of someone under pressure.
Two calls. Both outside, both on a personal device, both at times that lined up perfectly with the key operational moments. The morning of the kidnapping. The evening before the rescue that found an empty house.
Erin closed the tablet and stood up. The control room was busy: analysts typing, radios crackling, Graves on the screen reviewing the Surrey CCTV data. Helena was at her console, her back partially turned, her fingers moving across her keyboard.
"Helena."
Helena turned. Her face was composed, professional, attentive. The face of an officer ready to respond to a superior's instruction. Nothing in it that suggested guilt or fear or the awareness that the ground beneath her was about to collapse.
"Step outside with me."
Helena's eyes flickered. A fraction of a second, barely perceptible, but Erin caught it. The micro-expression of a person who knew, on some level, that this moment had been coming. She stood. "Of course."
They walked into the corridor. The stone walls were cool and the light from the high windows fell in pale columns and the air smelled of old wood and floor polish.
Two security officers were stationed at the end of the corridor.
Erin had asked them to be there twenty minutes ago. She hadn't explained why.
"I've been reviewing the CCTV," Erin said.
She kept her voice low and even. "You made a phone call from the kitchen garden at ten fourteen on the morning Florence was taken.
You made another call from the side entrance at twenty-one twelve last night, forty-eight minutes before the Latimer briefing.
Both calls were on your personal device.
Both calls were made outside, away from the logged communication channels. "
Helena's face changed. Not dramatically: a tightening around the jaw, a stillness in the eyes, the controlled recalibration of a professional who had been caught and was deciding, in real time, how to respond.
"Those were personal calls. I have a life outside this operation."
"The protection officer who got in the car with Florence on the morning of the kidnapping. The one who showed Vic the badge and the paperwork. He was on your detail. You placed him on Florence's security rotation three weeks before the visit."
Helena said nothing. Her jaw was tight. Her hands were very still at her sides.
"You gave Arthur's people access to the security protocols. You put a compromised officer on my daughter's detail. You leaked the Latimer rescue timing so they could move her before we arrived. You've been running the investigation into a kidnapping that you helped orchestrate."
"You can't prove any of this."
"I have CCTV of the calls. I have the personnel records showing you placed Officer Jennings on Florence's detail. And MI5 will have your phone records within the hour, which will show who you were calling. How long do you think it will take them to trace the number to Arthur's network?"
Helena's composure cracked. It happened in stages: a tremor in her lower lip, a shifting of weight from one foot to the other, the involuntary flexing of her hands. The mask of the competent officer slipping sideways to reveal something underneath that was frightened and furious and cornered.