Chapter 38
‘I was sitting at the traffic lights when I saw you cross the road,’ said Eloise.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Henley. ‘I didn’t even notice.’
‘That’s ok. Sometimes that building feels as though its sucking your soul, and you want to run away as far as possible but it’s good to see you, Anjelica.’
‘It’s good to see you too, Eloise. I would have told—’
Henley stopped as a car appeared behind Eloise, the engine revving with annoyance.
‘Let me park up and we’ll have a quick drink,’ said Eloise.
‘Eloise, I really can’t. I’ve got get back to the—’
‘One cup of coffee,’ Eloise said in the tone she reserved for the defendants appearing in her courtroom.
Henley closed her bag. There was no point fighting back. ‘Ok.’
‘If I’m honest, I’d rather be having a proper drink,’ Eloise said, emptying the sugar sachet into her latte. ‘But the last thing I need is a defendant to spot me knocking back a large gin and then getting into my car.’
‘You’ll be splashed over social media in a heartbeat,’ Henley replied.
‘Let’s stop beating around the bush,’ said Eloise. ‘You’ve been avoiding me.’
Henley chewed her biscuit. She knew it had been coming. The moment when Eloise brought her to task.
‘I wasn’t ignoring you on purpose, but this—’ Henley said.
‘You can stop right there if you’re about to use the “It’s this case” line. I was married to a police officer for over thirty years. I’ve heard every excuse imaginable.’
‘You’re right,’ Henley conceded. ‘I have been avoiding you, but I have also been consumed with this case.’
‘Fox-Carnell,’ Eloise said, exhaling sharply. ‘Harry hated that case. Hated her. Which was so unlike him, to hate a suspect. He always used to say, “I’m just doing my job. My emotions have got nothing to do with it,” but her. He said you could see in her eyes that she was evil.’
‘I’m not going to disagree but she’s now my victim. My case. I can’t treat her any differently just because I was in the room when she was charged with murder.’
‘Harry would have said the exact thing,’ Eloise said sadly.
They sat quietly in a moment of remembrance. Henley turned her face to the window, watching as the rush hour traffic stalled on London Road.
‘You wouldn’t have gone radio silent if you hadn’t found something,’ Eloise said. ‘I kept telling myself that no news is good news, but I know better than that.’
‘Is that why you spoke to Stephen?’ Henley asked Eloise. She felt a pang of regret at the sharpness of her tone when she saw the angst stretch the skin on Eloise’s face.
‘I didn’t go behind your back,’ Eloise said.
She leaned back in her seat and hugged herself as though she was cold.
‘Stephen came round to see me, and I was … you know what it’s like.
You’re minding your own business doing something mindless, like throwing out the mouldy peppers from the fridge and then all of a sudden, the grief hits you. ’
‘The last time it happened I was putting petrol in my car and, out of nowhere, it came over me like a wave,’ said Henley. ‘I couldn’t tell you who I was grieving for. Rhimes, mum or both.’
Eloise nodded with understanding. ‘I only told Stephen because he was there in that moment. He asked how I was, and it came out. Asking you for help. That I thought—’ Eloise lowered her voice. ‘That he didn’t do it himself.’
Henley knew she’d been living in a space of denial since Linh had confirmed that Rhimes hadn’t killed himself and that someone had falsified his death certificate. She could see and feel Eloise’s anguish and told herself that it would be kinder to lie, but knew she couldn’t.
There was no easy way to rip off the plaster or to make the sting of lemon juice on a cut less painful. ‘He didn’t,’ Henley said quickly.
Eloise’s face crumpled as though she was hearing the news of her husband’s death for the first time. ‘How?’ she asked quietly as Henley reached across the table and took hold of her hand, squeezing gently.
‘Are you sure you want me to?’ Henley asked softly.
‘Yes,’ Eloise said firmly, her eyes glistening as she pulled her hand away to wipe a tear, smearing her mascara.
‘Asphyxiation,’ said Henley. ‘A cord of some kind.’
Eloise put her hands to her face and breathed in deeply three times. Henley leaned forward as Eloise spoke, but her words were muffled, lost in the flesh of her palms.
‘I didn’t catch that,’ Henley said gently.
Eloise took her shaking hands away from her face and placed them on the table, the overhead light hitting the small diamonds in her eternity ring. ‘Did he fight back?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Yes, he did,’ Henley said as Rhimes’s postmortem pictures, the scratch marks vivid on his neck, flashed in her mind.
‘God, there are so many questions,’ Eloise said.
Henley watched as Eloise bit her lip and nodded her head as though acknowledging the conclusion of a conversation in her head.
‘Someone was in our house,’ Eloise said, facing Henley.
‘Whoever did it was watching us, tracking our movements. They knew that Harry always left for work before me. I was in that house whilst someone was downstairs killing my husband. Do you know how many murder cases I’ve seen in my career?
The moments of passion, the loss of control.
I understand that but when it’s pre-meditated.
It’s cold. Harry was a problem that they wanted to get rid of. ’
‘I’m so sorry, Eloise. I’m sorry that—’
‘No, don’t be,’ Eloise said vehemently. ‘I don’t know how to explain it but knowing that he was taken from me and didn’t leave me … it’s better. Does that make sense?’
‘It does,’ Henley agreed. ‘But what doesn’t make sense is—’
‘The why,’ Eloise concluded. ‘It’s the first thing that they teach you in law school when you’re learning how to cross examine a witness. Not to ask the why question. The why opens a door, and you have no idea where that open door could take you.’
‘I could just close the door and walk away but then I would go to bed every night wondering why.’
‘No,’ Eloise said defiantly. ‘Whatever the why is, it put my husband in the ground. You have a family, Anjelica.’
‘There’s a reason why you came to me,’ said Henley.
‘Yes, you trust me, but you know that I can’t walk past an open door.
Even if that door is only cracked open, I will push it further.
Even if this wasn’t about Harry, if it was somebody else, a victim on my board, I would do the same thing.
Keep digging and asking questions. You’ve shown me the opendoor, Eloise. ’
Henley instantly regretted her words when she saw the crushed look on Eloise’s face as she realised the full enormity of her actions.
‘I’ve put you in a terrible position and for that I’m truly sorry,’ Eloise said.
‘Don’t be. I was wrong to say that. You loved – no – love him. I would do the same thing.’
‘Can I ask that you at least don’t do it alone. Ask Stephen to help you.’
Henley picked up her bag and smiled. ‘You and I both know full well that Stephen is extremely pissed off with me,’ she said. ‘What you want is for him to protect me.’
‘And what’s wrong with that?’ Eloise asked, following Henley’s lead and picking up her coat. ‘Do you know the reason why Harry was so proud of the SCU? No egos. I don’t want you out there like a lone wolf.’
‘I can take care of myself.’
‘Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.’
Henley stepped outside and held the door for Eloise. She knew she was letting her pride and stubbornness get in the way.
‘Please have someone by your side if you’re going to find the people responsible for ripping Harry from our lives,’ said Eloise.
Henley hugged Eloise. ‘I won’t do this alone,’ she promised.
Henley felt as though a weight was sitting in her chest as she walked back to her car. She’d made a promise to Eloise, and she needed to honour it. She wasn’t ready to tell Stanford and Eastwood that she was looking into the why behind Rhimes’s death, but she did need help.
‘Fuck it,’ she said as she took out a phone and texted her ex-colleague, Chris Snyder, who was now an agent for the National Crime Agency.
‘Eastwood and I need to go to Manchester,’ said Stanford as Henley walked in.
‘What for?’ she asked. It would take less than five minutes to tell them what she knew about Rhimes. To give them a choice to say ‘yes, I’ll help you’ or just ‘walk away’, but the opportunity passed when she saw that Copeland was at her desk.
‘Didn’t you get my message?’ Stanford asked as Ezra entered the room.
‘I’ve been having problems with reception all afternoon,’ Henley said. She checked her phone and saw that she was still missing signal bars.
‘We believe we’ve got a viable link to our vigilante group. Two serving prisoners in Strangeways and also we have footage,’ Stanford explained.
‘Footage of what?’
‘Nathan Hall,’ said Eastwood. ‘Both from his security gate camera and what Ezra found online.’
‘Ok. Start with the prisoners. Who are they?’ asked Henley.
‘Karim Messenger and Gareth Humphreys,’ said Stanford. ‘They were both convicted of assaulting Douglas Mantell and were also members of a vigilante group called Iron Shadow.’
‘Such a ridiculous name,’ said Eastwood. ‘No points for creativity.’
‘What about Bo Hyoo?’ asked Henley.
Eastwood swivelled her monitor towards Henley. ‘Both charged with harassment after doxxing her and following her on the street, but for some inexplicable reason they were NFA’d on an assault charge.’
‘What was the alleged assault?’ Henley asked.
‘They tarred and feathered her, and I do not mean that as some poorly disguised joke,’ Eastwood said, clicking on a photograph icon.
Henley gasped and put her hand to her mouth as Bo Hyoo, sitting naked on a hospital bed, appeared on the screen. The skin on her neck, back and left arm had been stripped away and was red raw. White feathers were visible in her hair and on the back of her neck.
‘They couldn’t get hold of actual tar, so they used sulphuric acid,’ Eastwood explained.