by Eva Hudson
“Well, I know who her dealer was, don’t I? And if he was the killer, well…”
“What? He’ll want to silence you?”
Faber nodded vigorously.
“Did you mention Lauren’s habit when the police interviewed you?”
“No!” Her tone suggested she thought Ingrid was stupid. “I didn’t know for sure she was using drugs until I heard about the postmortem.”
“But you know who her dealer was?”
Another nod.
“You have to tell me a name. If I don’t know who he is, I can’t protect you from him.”
“But what if he finds out I’ve been speaking to you?”
“The only way for that to happen is if you tell him.” Ingrid felt like she was getting somewhere. “Come on, Madison. You can trust me.”
“He’s a student at Loriners. I don’t really know him.”
“A name is all I need.”
“You promise me he’ll never find out I told you?” Faber scratched her arm again, raking her fingernails hard across the skin.
How many more times did she have to tell her?
“I promise.”
Faber closed her eyes for several seconds. “Timo Klaason.” She spelled the name out for Ingrid. “When you find him, you should be careful. I don’t know him, but I’ve heard he likes to hit girls.”
18
The subdued atmosphere Ingrid had noticed on campus on her last visit seemed to have disappeared completely. Students hurried between buildings, chatting and laughing, heavy bags of books swinging from their shoulders. Although she looked carefully for it, Ingrid failed to spot any trace of graffiti on the wide gray concrete facades. She had sent the tissue with the paint sample on to the Bureau’s lab in DC. Just because it was inadmissible in a court of law, it didn’t mean it couldn’t help identify who had labeled Lauren a whore.
She had called ahead and arranged to meet Madison Faber’s research team leader after the first lecture of the afternoon session. The harassed tutor arrived late and insisted they talk on the way to her next meeting. She hugged an armful of files to her chest like a protective shield.
“I really appreciate your seeing me on such short notice.”
“Please—call me Rebecca. I’ll feel a hundred years old otherwise.” She nodded a greeting at a couple of students lounging on the grass next to the path. “You’ve seen Madison today?”
“I saw her this morning, as a matter of fact. She is extremely distressed.”
“She must be taking it hard. Not something you get over easily.”
“No—it was a traumatic experience for her.”
“And to be accused of—”
“I don’t think anyone was ever accusing her.”
“No—no, of course not. Even so—to be in police custody. In a foreign country. Must have been terrifying.” The woman checked her watch. “I really don’t have long. You said you wanted to discuss her welfare. Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I’d expect the American embassy to take an interest in.”
Ingrid slowed her pace, forcing the tutor to match her speed. Ingrid’s assessment was that Faber was at more risk from self-harm than anything the mysterious Timo Klaason might do to her. She also knew how much support she had needed when her friend Megan had been abducted. “I just thought, after the suicide last week, after Lauren, the university might not want another young woman to come to harm. She was extremely agitated. How has she seemed to you?”
“Seemed?”
“Anxious? Depressed? Has she been getting along with other students in the psychology department?”
“Why wouldn’t she?”
“There’s been no evidence of… bullying, for example?”
“She’s a postgraduate student, not a kindergarten pupil. Why would she want to bully anyone?” The lecturer lengthened her stride.
“I mean has Madison been bullied?”
“Of course not. That’s just ridiculous.”
“I take it she hasn’t come to you with any problems?”
The tutor stopped abruptly. “I’m not the person she would come to.”
“You aren’t?”
“Madison has only been part of my research group for a short while. I really don’t know the girl. Personally or academically.” She squeezed the files tighter in her arms.
“I thought—”
A shrill whistle sounded at the other end of the path. Ingrid looked up to see Angela Tate with one hand to her mouth. She whistled again then gestured urgently to a man holding a long-lens camera. What the hell was Tate doing here?
“Madison Faber switched research groups just before the spring break,” the tutor explained. “She was in Professor Younger’s group before that.”
“Are you sure?”
Tate whistled again. With some effort, her photographer jogged toward her. Ingrid scanned the wide piazza to see what the journalist was so interested in. She followed Tate’s gaze upward and her breath stalled in her throat. Five stories above Tate’s head, on the top floor of the main admin block, a girl stood at an open window, one foot resting on the window ledge, her arms braced against the window casement on either side. She threw back her head and let go with one hand. A collective gasp went up from the students gathered outside the building. The girl looked down at them and waved. A few hands waved back at her.
The girl let go with the other hand. She wobbled.
The crowd held its breath.
Behind the girl a figure approached the window. Tall, broad-shouldered. Definitely male. He reached a hand toward the girl. She half-turned her head. The man took another step forward and the girl tensed. The crowd gasped in unison.
Tate’s photographer made long swooping arcs with his zoom lens, predicting the girl’s downward trajectory.
Ingrid ran toward the crowd, not taking her eyes from the girl’s slim frame in the window.
For God’s sake, somebody grab her.
As if he’d read Ingrid’s mind, the man hovering behind her lurched forward, grabbing her left shoulder and knocking her off balance. Her left foot swung out over the ledge. The man wrapped his other arm around the girl’s waist and leaned away from the window. They both fell backward inside the room and dropped to the floor.
The crowd exhaled. Then a cheer went up.
Ingrid pushed into the building and threw herself up the stairs, leaping three, four steps with each stride. She reached the fifth floor to see the man and girl slumped against the wall, the man’s arms wrapped tightly around her. He looked toward Ingrid, his face pale and sweating.
It took Ingrid a moment to get her breath back, then another moment to recognize him.
19
The waitress took their order and slowly returned to the kitchen. Ingrid leaned closer to Angela Tate. “If this is going to work, we need to trust one another.”
The reporter raised her eyebrows and studied Ingrid from the other side of the table. They were sitting in a café that Tate had described as a ‘greasy spoon’ a couple of streets away from Loriners.
After the excitement in and around the admin building had subsided and the agitated student had been taken to the campus medical center, Ingrid had decided there was very little to be achieved by hanging around. Angela Tate had suggested they adjourn to the nearby establishment to ‘compare notes.’
“Trust, yes. But you can’t expect me to just hand over information without getting something from you in return,” Tate said. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
Ingrid took a sip of coffee and quickly set her cup back down. Instant. It tasted like an infusion of pencil shavings. “We share the same goal, and if there is something fishy going on at Loriners, I will certainly help you expose it.”
“So you do think something’s going on?”
Ingrid pressed her hands against the table. “It’s fair to say I wouldn’t still be at the campus if I didn’t think there was something that needed investigating.” Ingrid waved to the woman behind
the counter and ordered an orange juice, hopeful it would at least taste of oranges. “So what have you sniffed out about Professor Younger?”
“The hero of the hour? Quite dashing, wasn’t he, in his tight shirt and designer pants? My photographer got some lovely shots as Younger helped the girl to the medical center. We’ll probably run a feature tomorrow. Why are you interested in the good professor?”
“He was Lauren’s research group leader. I’m following up on all her college contacts.”
The waitress dumped a small carton of OJ on the table and wandered back to the counter. Ingrid stuck the plastic straw into the carton and took a tentative sip. The journalist arched an eyebrow. “And who else have you spoken to?”
“Mostly people outside the psychology department.”
“Well, that’s because the professor and his research are a closed shop.” Tate wrinkled her nose. “There’s a protective firewall around him and his inner circle that so far I haven’t found a way of penetrating. And believe me, I’ve tried everything.”
“And what have you found out?”
“You first.”
“Excuse me?”
“You tell me what you’ve found out,” Tate said, “and then I’ll reveal all.”
Ingrid had thought things had been going a little too well. She sucked on the plastic straw. “I take it you know about the drug taking on campus?”
“Students taking drugs is hardly news,” Tate said, searching for something on her phone. “Lecturers taking drugs wouldn’t even make it into the paper these days.” The journalist pulled an irritated face. She placed her phone on the table and proceeded to scroll through her picture gallery. She stopped at a dark, blurry photograph. “It doesn’t do you justice.”
Ingrid caught a brief glimpse of herself, lying in an awkward heap on the walkway at Loriners, before Tate swiped a finger across the screen.
“Here we are.” Tate tapped twice and an image of the graffiti symbols filled the screen. “I haven’t had any luck trying to find reference to the symbols anywhere. I’ve had the paper’s librarian dig into it, and she’s come up with nothing. And believe me, if there was something out there, Rita would have sniffed it out.” She tilted her head as she gazed at the image. “Have you found anything out?”
Ingrid hesitated. Feeding Tate a crumb couldn’t do any harm. “I sent my own hand-drawn version of the symbol to Quantico. There was some excitement initially—an agent thought there might be some ancient hieroglyphic connection, but it came to nothing.”
Tate narrowed her eyes, obviously trying to gauge whether or not Ingrid was telling her the truth. “I’m not surprised. As I said, Rita would have found something otherwise.” She swiped at the screen again and stopped at a photo of two students, one male, one female, both sporting purple and green polo shirts. “Now this I find interesting,” Tate said. “I’ve gone through all the clubs and societies listed at the college—even extended it to the rest of the University of London—and none of them uses this particular combination of colors.” She shifted her gaze to Ingrid’s face. “Don’t you think that’s peculiar?”
Ingrid shrugged.
“You must have noticed them, but have you also noticed they’ve disappeared from campus completely? Not a trace. The graffiti’s miraculously vanished too.”
Ingrid tried to recall when she’d last seen a student in one of the polo shirts.
“Take a look at these two.” Tate tapped the screen, enlarging the image of the students.
“Let me see.”
Tate handed her the phone. Ingrid scrolled through a selection of images. She spotted the student in Younger’s tutorial group, but didn’t know any of the others. But there was something striking about them. “Notice anything about them?” Ingrid asked.
Tate took the phone and peered at the images like a woman who needed reading specs. “What have you spotted?”
“It might be nothing.” Ingrid slurped loudly as she reached the bottom of the carton. “Within a normal group, you’d expect a bit of… irregularity. Short, fat, spotty, ugly, older, balder. Some imperfection or other. These students are all perfect. Look at their hair. Their skin. Their smiles. All blemish-free and perfectly proportioned. They look like they’ve stepped out of a glossy brochure.”
“And that means…?”
“I’m not—” Ingrid was cut short by her phone buzzing noisily on the table. “I need to take this call.” She jumped up and ran out onto the sidewalk. “Jennifer, thanks for getting back to me so fast. What have you got on Timo Klaason?”
“I’ve got an address for you.”
Ingrid clenched her fist. “Brilliant. Well done.”
“I’m texting it to you now.”
Ingrid glanced through the window at wily old Tate. She hoped she’d get considerably more out of Timo Klaason.
20
Ingrid arrived at the pub early. After a brief survey of the exits, front and back, and the restrooms, she settled on a stool at the long bar. The bartender stopped wiping down the woodwork and stared at her quite openly. From the corner of her eye she could have sworn his mouth was gaping. He cleared his throat and ambled over to her.
“What’s a nice girl like you—”
She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Don’t even think about finishing that sentence. I’ll have a ginger ale. No ice.”
“Only trying to be friendly. Jesus.”
The glass was warm when he dumped it on the bar, fresh from the dishwasher. She saw no benefit in getting into a fight with him, so chose not to ask for a replacement.
Detective Constable Ralph Mills arrived ten minutes later. Right on time. So punctual, in fact, Ingrid suspected he’d been pacing up and down outside, just waiting for the big hand to hit twelve.
“Am I late? Have you been waiting long?” He slipped onto the stool next to hers. “Would you like another?”
“I’m fine.” She gestured to a free table on the other side of the room. “Shall we?”
Mills ordered a pint of cider on draft and joined her, carefully tucking his long legs beneath the low table. “Cheers,” he said and then proceeded to drink half his cider in three gulps. His nervousness was endearing. He wiped a hand across his mouth and attempted to suppress a belch. He almost succeeded. “So. This is nice. You found it all right?”
“Obviously.”
“Sorry, stupid question.” He looked so much like Clark Swanson, the motorcycle-riding bad boy of Middleton High, Ingrid would swear they were related if they weren’t so completely different in temperament. “I suppose you’re wondering why I suggested getting together like this?”
Ingrid said nothing, preferring to watch Mills twisting himself further into his embarrassment.
He drank another quarter of his cider. “I don’t want you getting the wrong impression. I mean, it’s not as if I make a habit of this.”
“It seems quite simple to me. You asked me out; I said yes. And here we both are.” She smiled again, less fulsomely this time.
“But it wasn’t as if this was my idea.”
“It wasn’t?”
“See? I knew I was right to clear things up straight off the bat.”
Ingrid lifted her drink to her mouth, felt the warmth of the glass against her lip and put it down again. “Are you trying to tell me this isn’t a date?” She couldn’t decide if she was relieved.
“God, no. Is that really what you thought?” His face colored in an instant. A shade somewhere between crimson and beet.
“Ah,” she said. “McKittrick.”
His right eye twitched in reply. “Boss wanted to keep things strictly off the books.”
And she also wanted to set us up.
“She said she’d liaise with you herself, but”—he lowered his voice—“she asked me to speak to you because she’s under a lot of pressure at the moment. From high up. Plus she’s being scrutinized.” He pulled a face.
“Scrutinized how?”
“Can’t say exactly
—it’s not really my place to. There’s stuff going on.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“All kinds. Thing is, she can’t throw resources at the Shelbourne case because, well, the scrutiny.”
“But?”
“But she isn’t happy about the situation.”
“She didn’t seem to have a problem with the accidental death verdict when I spoke to her about it.”
“See.” He inched in further. “She’s being leaned on… and well… that’s made her curious. Now she wants to probe a little more.”
“I still don’t see how I fit in.”
He ran a pale hand through his thick brown hair. “The boss was hoping you’d share anything about the case that you happen to dig up. She can’t be seen to do it herself.”
“And in return?”
“I help you out on the QT.”
“QT?”
“The down low.” He smiled shyly at his use of teenspeak, lifting the corners of his mouth a fraction. He had never looked more like Clark Swanson, and Ingrid’s cheeks prickled with heat. You’re engaged, she told herself. To be married.
Mills’s smile disappeared. He furrowed his brow, a knot of tension forming between his eyebrows. “It’s just occurred to me… you thought I’d actually asked you out on a date… yet you still agreed to come.”
“‘Mutually beneficial’ you said.” She was smiling at him.
His frown deepened. “So, how can I help?”
She told him about the paint sample that she had sent for analysis, and he told her from now on he would help with that sort of thing. When she got the results, he could run it on their database to see if the same paint had been used by known graffiti artists, though whoever wrote lauren shelbourne = whore wasn’t exactly Banksy. But it was a start.
“There is something else you could do for me,” Ingrid said.
“Of course.”
Ingrid wasn’t at all sure that what she was about to suggest was a good idea. “Can you run a name through your databases for me?”
“Sure.”
“Greg Brewster.” A chill spread over her skin. She wasn’t used to flagrantly breaking the rules.