by Eva Hudson
“I was wondering if you’d seen anything of our Dutch friend lately—Timo Klaason?”
“He doesn’t study here anymore. We discussed that the last time you were here.”
“You told me you didn’t know him. Yet it turns out he was actually part of your research group.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“I have it on good authority.”
“Whose?”
“One of your other students. Madison Faber.”
He flinched at the mention of her name. “She is, as usual, mistaken. Don’t you think I’d remember him if he was part of the group?”
“The police are pursuing Klaason in connection with a drugs offense.” She watched Younger’s reaction.
He paused before answering. Calculating. Judging the best way to respond, maybe. “Drugs? One of my students?” He tilted his head to one side. “I suppose that sort of thing goes on within every student body.”
Ingrid folded her arms schoolmarmishly.
“Are you telling me you never experimented while you were at college? A little weed?”
“Never appealed.”
He gave her a wry smile.
“They want to question him about a serious drugs offense. We’re not talking about smoking the odd joint here and there.”
“Just as well he left the college. We don’t want that kind of thing at Loriners.” He wetted his dry lips with his tongue. “How serious?”
“You don’t know?”
“How on earth would I? I don’t even remember him.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, if we’re done here, I really must ask you to leave.” He opened a drawer in the next file cabinet. “I take it you can see yourself out.” He didn’t bother to look at her.
Either he wasn’t even curious about Klaason’s offense, or he knew about it already?
“I’m not sure that we are… done, that is,” Ingrid said.
He blew out an irritated sigh.
“When we spoke before, you told me Lauren Shelbourne was an exceptional student.”
Younger tensed slightly but recovered quickly. “She was. She’ll be greatly missed.” His shoulders slumped, his hands dropping inside the drawer. “By everyone.”
“By you in particular?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I got the impression Lauren was a favorite of yours.”
“She was intelligent, hardworking, energetic. Students like Lauren don’t come along that often. It was a pleasure to work with her.” He straightened up, pulling back his shoulders, and fixed Ingrid with a cold stare. “Where are you going with this?”
“So much of a pleasure you… made it personal?” She stepped up close. She could smell coffee and a metallic tang on his breath.
“What?” He leaned toward her.
“Were you having a sexual relationship with Lauren Shelbourne?”
His mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. “You’ve really got the gall to ask me that? Incredible. Is that what the US government is paying you for? To harass British citizens?”
“I’m just pursuing a line a of inquiry—”
“How dare you!” He fumbled in the rear pocket of his pants and retrieved a wallet, then pulled out a small square color photograph of a dark-haired woman in her late thirties. She had perfectly proportioned features. Full lips, straight nose, chiseled cheekbones. Younger prodded the picture with a finger. “That, if you’re in any way interested, is my beautiful wife. The mother of my children. We’ve been together fifteen years. Claire is my best friend, closest ally and confidante. Do you think I would jeopardize a relationship like that for the sake of… what? A sordid little affair with a research student?”
She had certainly hit a nerve. He glared at her, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Get out!”
Ingrid stood her ground.
“You have no jurisdiction here. I’ve only been speaking to you out of courtesy. Leave now before I get security to escort you from the premises.” He squared up to her. “Get. Out.”
“I’d think about your answer very carefully when you’re asked that question again.”
“No one in their right mind would even ask it.” He grabbed the phone from his pocket and waved it at her. “What’s it to be? You leave now, or I have you forcibly removed?”
Ingrid backed away. She scanned the rows of file cabinets. “This cleanup of yours…”
“What about it?”
“You’re wasting your time. It’ll be impossible to destroy all the evidence.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think you know.”
“You’re out of your mind.” He swiped the screen of his phone and tapped in a number.
“It’s OK—I’m leaving.”
As she passed the long row of narrow booths, Ingrid heard Younger raise his voice.
“For Christ’s sake,” she heard him say into his phone, “please tell me you’re about to leave the country.”
36
She reached the main piazza and dialed Angela Tate’s number. The journalist answered after a half dozen rings.
“What?”
She had obviously woken her up.
“This is Ingrid Skyberg. Have you coaxed your sources to go on the record yet?”
“What?”
“Is your story about Younger’s program about to hit the streets?”
There was a silence on the line. “Why are you asking?”
“I’ve just seen Younger. He’s covering his tracks. What isn’t being moved is being destroyed. Files, CDs, paperwork, you name it. I could practically smell smoke coming out of the shredding machine.”
“Shit.”
“Maybe one of your sources told him. Perhaps his hold over them is stronger than you thought.”
Ingrid kept a close eye on the main entrance of the research block, expecting to see more of Younger’s acolytes arrive to help with the cleanup operation. What she didn’t expect to see was Younger himself racing through the doors, his cell phone clamped to one ear, a dark gray baseball cap pulled low over his head. She snuck into a doorway.
“You’ve got to stop him destroying the evidence,” Tate said.
“I’m not in a position to do that.”
“Inform the college authorities.”
“I’m kinda busy right now.” Ingrid hung up, and when Younger had crossed the square, she emerged from her hiding place. The professor exited through the main gates, and Ingrid followed, staying a good fifty yards behind him. Where did he have to be so urgently he could abandon the task of sanitizing his office and laboratory?
Ingrid trailed Younger all the way along the street, watching and waiting as he stopped at three different ATMs, withdrawing cash from each one. He stuffed the money in his pocket and continued until he reached the next cross lights, where he turned right. When she reached the corner, she scanned the sea of faces for Younger, but couldn’t pick him out. This street was busier, lined with stores on either side, and full of rush-hour commuters. She’d lost him.
Dammit.
She stared at the bobbing heads, but the professor had vanished. Her heart thudded. He could be in any one of the stores. She headed up the street, hoping she was still going in the right direction, praying he hadn’t hopped on a bus. Mostly she hoped he hadn’t already spotted her. She kept her eyes peeled and her legs moving. Then she spotted his baseball cap. He had picked up his pace. Wherever he was headed, he needed to get there fast. Younger took the next left, and Ingrid hurried to the corner.
It was a residential street and much quieter. There was only a handful of people on the sidewalk, and Ingrid had no choice but to let the gap widen between them, even if it meant the risk of losing him again.
She followed him for a half mile through a network of quiet roads until his pace slowed. Younger was checking the numbers of the large duplex, two-story houses as he passed them. Each house had a garage out front and a narrow alley running alongside it. Most front yards were neat
and clean. Smart cars on the driveways. After another fifty yards Younger stopped abruptly, and Ingrid ducked behind an SUV. She peered through its windows and saw him glance left and right before walking up the front path of a house that had a bright red motorcycle parked on the driveway. Younger banged a fist against the door, which was opened almost immediately. Younger slipped inside, the door closing quickly behind him. Less than a minute later he was back out on the street, adjusting his cap and retracing his steps.
Ingrid waited behind the SUV until Younger reached the end of the street. Then she watched the house and the corner for another five minutes until she was happy the professor wasn’t returning.
She hurried across the road and made straight for the alleyway that ran along the side of the house. She pushed open a wooden gate to discover a ramshackle backyard. A square lawn overgrown with weeds took up most of the space, discarded plastic toys strewn over it. She stopped for a moment. Was this a family home? Would there be children inside? She continued into the yard, where she found the back door, a cigarette smoldering in a saucer on the ground beside it. She crept up to the door and tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. She pushed it open a fraction then waited for a response from someone inside. There wasn’t one. She held her breath and stepped over the threshold, feeling exposed without a weapon. All she could do was work quietly and slowly, listening and watching as she went. She entered a long, narrow galley-style kitchen. Pots and pans were stacked high in the sink and on the drainer. Empty cans of beer littered the counter. The room smelled of tobacco and Chinese takeout.
She stopped. Listened. No sign of activity.
She continued through the kitchen until she reached a gloomy hallway. A staircase to her right, with a low, narrow door set into some wooden paneling. On her left was a closed door—the living room presumably—and straight ahead was the front door leading out onto the street. She crept forward and listened at the door on the left. All she heard was her own heartbeat banging in her ears.
Someone had to be in the house. Judging by the silence of the room on her left, that someone was upstairs. She inhaled. Listened again. Somebody coughed. The sound came from somewhere above and behind her, perhaps on the second-floor landing.
“Now’s as good a time as any.” A woman’s voice.
“No, it’ll wait until tonight.” A man’s voice.
“What’s there to hang around for?” The woman again.
Both voices English. Not foreign. Not Dutch. Not Timo Klaason.
Dammit.
She’d been so sure. She continued to listen, but the conversation had ended. She moved toward the front door. No point in staying now. She tried the door. It was locked. No sign of a key. She turned back to the kitchen, but before she could take a step, the door beneath the stairs opened. She froze for a microsecond before instinct kicked in. She levered down the handle of the door into the living room and ducked inside. In the gap between the door and frame, a tall figure emerged from the cellar door under the stairs.
Timo Klaason. No question.
He had a small duffel bag slung over one shoulder, a motorcycle helmet in his other hand. He leaned over the banister and shouted up the stairs, “Hey, you guys! I’m leaving now. Thanks for everything, yeah?”
Scraping and thumping overhead was swiftly followed by heavy footsteps clattering down the stairs. The leaving committee. Ingrid pushed the door further toward the jamb. She heard the sound of a key in the lock, then the front door opening.
“Send us a postcard, yeah?” the woman said.
“Sure—I’ll upload my holiday photos to Flickr for you.”
“All right, whatever. Take care of yourself, though, I mean it.”
“I always do,” Klaason called from outside.
The motorbike in the front yard started to roar. Ingrid reached for her cell phone and dialed 999. Without hanging up, she shoved the phone in her pocket and threw open the door.
“What the fu—”
The woman and man wheeled around toward her, their jaws dropping wide. Ingrid pushed a path between them and threw herself through the front door. The bike revved again. Ingrid leaped toward it, clawing at Klaason’s back. He half turned, his right arm swinging at her, making contact with her ribs. She flinched but tightened her hold. She felt a pair of hands grip her shoulders, trying to yank her off the bike. She gripped him even harder.
“Help! Police!” she shouted. “I’m being attacked!” She screamed the address of the house at the top of her voice, hoping she was still connected to emergency services. The hands on her shoulders let go.
The engine revved again and Klaason accelerated out of the front yard and into the street. Ingrid held on tight. Klaason couldn’t control the bike, but she clung on.
They went twenty yards down the street, thirty, forty. He started swinging the bike, trying to throw her off. This wasn’t going to end well. She pressed her thighs against the bike, freeing her hands. She reached forward and grabbed his right arm. He accelerated harder. She didn’t even want to look at the speedometer. He took his left hand off the clutch and whacked her right hand, but she tightened her grip. They were coming up to a junction. They were going too fast to take the corner safely. He braked hard and the bike slid sideways beneath them. Ingrid let go and slammed, shoulder first, into a parked car. Her body thumped down onto the road. She heard sirens in the distance.
And then everything went dark.
37
The embassy staff doctor typed up his medical report, alternately sucking his teeth and sighing as he pecked at his keyboard.
“Bed rest,” he said after he’d tapped the final key with a flourish. “It’s all I can suggest. Painkillers every four hours, every two if you switch between ibuprofen and paracetamol.” He looked at her over the top of the glasses balancing on his thick nose. “I’ll sign you off duty for the rest of the week.”
Ingrid shook her head. “Not possible. I’m in the middle of an investigation.”
“Tough.”
Two hours earlier, much to the dismay of the medical staff at King’s College Hospital, Ingrid had discharged herself shortly after arriving there by ambulance. The doctors had wanted to keep her in overnight for observation, a precaution for all concussion sufferers, they’d explained. They told her how lucky she had been to have escaped such a serious accident with no broken bones or ruptured organs. She’d listened politely to them until they were done, then demanded they give her back her clothes so she could get out of there.
As she sat staring into the embassy MD’s rheumy eyes, she felt anything but lucky. Every part of her was either bruised or grazed, and every time she moved, she set off a new tsunami of pain through her entire body. Lucky or not, she sure as hell wasn’t going to be confined to quarters.
“Really, Doc, I look a lot worse than I am. It’s my coloring—I bruise easily. I’m fine to carry out desk duties, wouldn’t you say?”
The doctor pushed his glasses onto his head and noisily drew in air through his teeth. He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “Very well. But make sure you perform light duties only. Here in the embassy, where I can keep an eye on you.”
When she walked into the criminal division office, Jennifer’s mouth fell open, making her look even younger than her twenty-three years. She looked like she should still be selling Girl Scout cookies.
“Don’t ask.”
Jen got up. “I, like, have to ask. Did you come off your motorcycle?”
“Not exactly.”
Ingrid gave her the basic outline of what had happened. Jen perched on her desk, peering at the grazes on Ingrid’s face, her luscious strawberry-blond hair framing increasingly concerned features.
“I don’t understand,” Jen said. “This guy is Dutch, right?”
“Correct.”
“And he’s a drug dealer, like, in the UK? Selling drugs to British students?”
Ingrid fired up her computer. “He doesn’t care about their nationality.”
/> “But, like, this might sound really stupid, but what’s it got to do with us? First you find his… his factory, then you track him down. Are the British police paying you or something?”
Jen was not being stupid. Her summary was totally correct. It didn’t really matter that Ingrid was after answers in the Shelbourne case, the Klaason thing had been an unnecessary detour. The whole reason she’d checked out of the hospital was to stop Sol and Louden finding out just how far off track she’d gotten.
Among her emails was one from the forensics lab in DC with the subject line Sample request ready. The paint analysis. She clicked on it. Ingrid scanned through the explanatory notes, registered something about the delay due to the sample not matching US databases, and found what she was looking for. The paint used to write lauren shelbourne = whore on the walls of Loriners the day after her death was made by Dulux, and the shade was Sun Dust 2.
Her desk phone rang. Normally calls to the department went to Jen’s phone.
“You want me to get that?”
Ingrid waved her away. “Criminal Division, agent Skyberg speaking.”
“Hi, sweetie.”
“Marshall! Did someone call you?”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s nothing.” Ingrid had thought maybe someone had let him know about her hospitalization. No need to tell him she was OK. “How are you?”
“Sweetie, listen.” He was talking very quietly. “You need to leave the building. Go for a walk. And take your cell.”
“Marsh?”
“I can’t say any more.”
“Marsh, I—”
“Just pick up your coat, and go. You’ve got five minutes, OK?”
What the hell was going on with him? It was not like Marshall, which was why she was going to do as he said. “Jen, I’m just heading out to pick up some painkillers, OK?”
“You want me to go?”
“Thanks, but I think a gentle walk would do me good.”