by Eva Hudson
Ingrid knew that hadn’t been why he was calling.
“The Met have been in touch. Concerned there may have been a security breach. Counter Terrorism Command. Starting to ring any bells?”
Ingrid’s blood turned to ice. “Is this to do with Mulroony?”
“You tell me.”
Ingrid closed her eyes, silently hoping she hadn’t got McKittrick or Mills into trouble. “I was only hoping to speak to his Met handler. I never even got a name.”
Sol inhaled audibly. “Do yourself a favor, agent, when it comes to your predecessor, ditch your tenacity, lose your curiosity and discover a blind eye that will stand you in good stead. You hear me?”
“Do I get to ask why?”
“It’s better if you don’t.”
Neither of them said anything for several moments.
“My taxi’s here.” It was a lie, but she hung up anyway, too annoyed to talk anymore to her boss. She scrolled for Mills number, but stopped herself from calling him. Leaving three messages might just send the wrong signal, even if all three were genuinely about work. She was, she reminded herself, engaged, and that came with certain obligations she intended to honor.
The taxi came and took her toward Hampstead. She wanted to speak to the family friend Faber was staying with. Perhaps she could shed more light on the young woman’s mental stability. Her phone illuminated in her lap with a text. It was from Mills.
Sorry. Not ignoring you. Been flat out. Big news. Stuart Younger has been charged with Lauren Shelbourne’s murder. He was remanded in custody about an hour ago.
Ingrid dropped the phone onto the seat and gazed out the window. She didn’t know how to feel. A tiny bit proud that she had been the one who hadn’t let it lie? Pleased the smug smile would have been wiped off Younger’s face? Desperately sad a young woman’s life had been ended not by misadventure, but by force? Her head fell against the window and she watched the traffic.
If Younger had been charged, that meant Natasha and the Crown Prosecution Service felt there was sufficient evidence. They wouldn’t just be taking Faber’s word for it. Maybe he had even confessed.
Damn.
There was somewhere else she needed to be.
“Excuse me,” she said to the driver. “Can you take me to the Ixion Hotel in Mayfair?”
He looked at her in the rearview mirror. “It’ll be extra.”
“Whatever.”
Somebody had to tell the Shelbournes their daughter had been murdered.
47
Ingrid walked slowly back to the embassy. Lisa Shelbourne had screamed when she’d told her. Alex had remained perfectly still apart from the tears rolling down her cheeks. Anthony Shelbourne had paced like a caged animal. Ingrid absorbed as much of their pain as she could, but she had to put up a barrier. Their grief, their anger, added to her own about the friend she had lost. She didn’t know what had happened to Megan after her abduction, but every crime scene, every murder report she read, Ingrid could never quite stop herself from imagining her friend was the victim. She made her apologies and her excuses and left them to their anguish and heartbreak.
By the time she got back to her desk, most of the civilian staff had gone home. A few other agents were still working, but the place had a weekend feel. She closed her office door and signed in to the computer network, pulled up a browser and logged in to her personal Skype account. An icon told her Marshall was online. But that wasn’t whom she had arranged to call. She tapped in the details, and her call was answered almost immediately, and the Skype window was filled with the surprisingly healthy features of an ex-schoolteacher from Washington Heights.
“Hello, Mr. Timms,” she said.
A beat later the tanned face beamed back at her. “Agent Skyberg, please, call me Kevin.”
The years had been kinder to Kevin Timms than she had been expecting. After being forced out of his chosen profession by the false claims of a fifteen-year-old Madison Faber, his reputation ruined, Ingrid had supposed the man would have turned to drink or drugs. According to the records, Timms had moved to Mexico shortly after leaving the school and hadn’t returned to the US. She’d only managed to trace him by searching social media sites.
“OK,” he said, “you have to put me out of my misery. My mind has been racing since you first contacted me. What does the FBI want with a simple man eking out an honest existence south of the border? I’m assuming you don’t want to haul my ass back to the US, else you wouldn’t have gotten in touch first.” He smiled at her again and leaned back in his seat. Behind him, through the glass of patio doors, Ingrid spotted a generously proportioned swimming pool, two very tanned children playing noiselessly. It seemed Kevin Timms had done very well for himself in the last seven years.
“Don’t worry, sir—you’re quite safe.”
“Good, because I’ve no intention of ever coming back.” He picked up a tall glass of yellow liquid, an umbrella sticking out the top, and lifted it toward the webcam of his laptop. “Giving up teaching was the best thing that could have happened to me.” He took a sip of his juice. At least she assumed it was juice. It was just after lunch in Lake Chapala.
“That’s why I’m calling. I’d like to talk to you about Madison Faber.”
He put down his glass with a clunk. “Why, what has she done now, murdered somebody?”
Ingrid’s heart missed a beat, but she ignored the remark. “I wondered whether you could go over the details of—”
He cut her off. “Do you know, I thank that twisted bitch every single day of my life. If it weren’t for her, I’d probably still be teaching.”
“I’ve read the report of what happened, but I was hoping you’d be able to fill in the blanks for me.”
“I’d really rather not relive that time in my life,” he said. And then spent the next ten minutes doing exactly that.
When he reached the part of his story Ingrid hadn’t heard before, she stopped him. “Wait a minute, are you saying Madison Faber was stalking you?”
“She was always waiting for me after school. At my house on the weekend. Dressed like a whore, might I add. Then, when I’d made it clear I wasn’t interested, she turned on me. Twisting reality so that suddenly it was me stalking her day and night. Harassing her any chance I got. Until finally I supposedly attacked her one afternoon in the chemistry lab.”
“She withdrew all her claims.”
“Too late for my career. Still, as I say, I’ve never looked back. I make more now in a month than I did in a year.” He waved a paperback book at the webcam. “Romantic fiction. Quite ironic, don’t you think? I can churn out one of these every two months. More than covers my extravagant lifestyle.”
“Do you know why she withdrew her story?”
“Not for certain. Though if you put a gun to my head, I’d guess the school leaned on her. And her family.”
Though the image of his face on her screen had started to break up a little, Ingrid couldn’t mistake the change in his expression. Gone were the toothy grin and raised eyebrows, replaced by a thin-lipped scowl and furrowed brow. A few moments later he snapped himself out of whatever reverie had come over him, and he clapped his hands together. “So, what do you need from me, Agent? A character reference for Miss Faber? A report on the standard of her high school chemistry?”
“I think you’ve given me enough information for now, thank you.”
“You’re kidding me. I’ve only just gotten started.” He lifted his glass. “You still haven’t told me what she’s done to come to the attention of the FBI. Must be some serious shit. Did she murder somebody?”
Ingrid glanced away from the screen, aware someone was standing at the threshold of the office. “Mr Timms, I’m sorry, but I have to go.” She thanked him again and turned to the woman in her doorway. “Hi.”
“Hi. I’m Christine. I work with the counterespionage group.”
“Hi, yes, come in.”
Christine, a robust-looking woman in her thirties with a f
ormidable power suit, strode toward her with a piece of paper in her hand. “I’ve taken a couple of calls for you today.”
“That’s weird.”
“I know, I think there’s a divert on the system, so I couldn’t put this through to you.” She placed the paper on Ingrid’s desk. “This man was quite insistent you call him back.”
Ingrid looked down at the name. Julian Granger. “Who is he?”
“An arrogant asshole is all I can tell you.”
“Well, thanks for bringing it to me.”
Christine called out a ‘you’re welcome’ on her way out.
Ingrid picked up her phone and dialed.
“Julian Granger.” The man was upper class. He sounded like he was in a BBC adaptation of a Le Carré thriller.
“Ingrid Skyberg. I understand you wanted me to call.”
“Ah, yes, Miss Skyberg, where have you been?”
Christine’s description of him was so far wholly accurate.
“I only just got your message.”
“Hmmm.”
“Mr Granger? Why are we speaking?”
“I am Stuart Younger’s solicitor. He is asking to see you.”
“What?”
“In fact, he is insisting.”
48
Early the following morning, Ingrid got off the Triumph, pleased her body had healed well enough to handle being on two wheels again, and walked up the steps of Lewisham police station. With any luck she could have a quick word with McKittrick before visiting Stuart Younger in the cells. She unzipped her motorcycle jacket and realized she had got a smudge of engine oil on the pants leg of her shabby suit. She really did have to buy some new clothes.
“Miss Skyberg?”
“Yes?”
“Julian Granger.” She had already guessed as much. He looked as upper class as he sounded with a double-breasted pinstripe suit and a perfect triangle of a silk pocket square poking out of his suit jacket. It was almost impossible to tell his age, as his outfit was so old-fashioned, but she’d hazard he was early thirties. His gold watch rattled as they shook hands. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve taken the liberty of signing you in. If you would come this way.”
A uniformed officer led them into a stairwell and took them down two flights. So much for getting the latest from McKittrick.
“He’s being transferred to Thamesmead later,” Granger said.
“What’s Thamesmead?” Ingrid asked.
“A category B prison. I’m very grateful you came. The professor is convinced you can help.”
Ingrid gripped the chin guard of her helmet as they trotted quickly downwards. “What has he been charged with?”
“You don’t know?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
The constable opened a door that led into a waiting area. “Desk sergeant will sort you out,” he said before leaving.
An aroma of stale body odor mingled with the more subtle scent of disinfectant and overcooked food. They were now underground in the bowels of the Victorian building, and there were no windows and no phone signal. The tile floor beneath their feet gleamed only in patches: decades of shuffling footsteps had scuffed and scraped the surface so badly that no amount of polishing could fix it.
“Mr Granger,” the sergeant said from behind a counter, “I see you have company this morning.”
Granger made the introductions and Ingrid signed a succession of forms the sergeant put in front of her. Once the paperwork was out of the way, the sergeant gestured for Ingrid to follow him.
“What about you?” she said to Granger.
“He wants to speak to you alone.”
At the end of a long corridor lined with cells, Ingrid was shown into a visitor room, where she was patted down by a female constable. “I need to take that.” She nodded to the helmet. “You could knock him out with that.”
Ingrid handed it over and opened her shoulder bag for inspection. Satisfied she was free of offensive weapons, the constable told Ingrid to take a seat. “We’ll bring him out in a minute.”
Ingrid sat on an orange plastic chair on one side of a wooden table that was covered in graffiti and scratched messages. Protestations of innocence, profanities and women’s names predominated. She heard footsteps.
Stuart Younger appeared in the doorway, accompanied by an officer.
“I’ll be right outside,” he said. “Knock when you want to leave.”
Younger was dressed in his own clothes, presumably the ones he’d been arrested in, and the pants were grimy, his shirt crumpled and creased. His hair was damp against his scalp. His eyes were puffed and red-rimmed; a slick of sweat covered his forehead. “Thank you so much for agreeing to see me,” he said, his hand outstretched as she approached.
Ingrid ignored the hand. She didn’t want him to think she was doing him any favors. Younger took his seat and she waited for him to speak.
“She’s out to destroy me. You know that, don’t you?” Younger leaned in close. “My work, my career, my marriage.” The last word snagged in his throat. For a second Ingrid thought he might cry. “It’s a tissue of lies. Everything she told the police.”
“Take a moment,” Ingrid told him. “Breathe slowly. Then back right up and start at the beginning. Do you need a glass of water?”
“No, I’m fine. I just need you to listen to me. The police won’t take me seriously.”
She wasn’t sure she would either.
“I started to tell them about her, how evil she is, but they weren’t interested. They insisted on repeating the same questions over and over. Like a stuck record. My solicitor advised me to stay silent. I’ve provided a written statement about her. But the way things stand, I can’t be sure anyone in authority has even read it.” He rubbed a hand over his head. “Why are they listening to her?”
Ingrid studied him carefully.
“Why would they believe her and not me?” He clasped his hands together and stared with wild, wide eyes into Ingrid’s face.
“If you need me to listen to you, then you have to do what I say.” Ingrid spoke very clearly and slowly, as she might to an overexcited child. “Do you understand?”
He nodded, his face pinched.
“Good. Now—tell me who you’re talking about.”
“It’s bloody obvious, isn’t it?”
“I need to hear you say the name.”
“Madison fucking Faber. Is that clear enough for you?” He squeezed his hands into tight fists and thumped the table.
“Take it easy,” Ingrid said.
“For Christ’s sake, they’ve charged me with murder.”
“I can get up and leave, anytime. Walk straight out that door and not look back. Give me a reason to keep listening—start from the beginning.”
He sat back in his chair and shoved his fists under his arms. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Then start talking.”
He closed his eyes for a moment then gazed down at the tabletop. “Madison Faber started at Loriners in October last year. She was enrolled on the MSc course. It became clear very quickly she was a gifted student—a sharp, forensic mind, hardworking, energetic. Before the end of the first term, she was working with me and a handful of other postgraduate students in my research program. A program I began five years ago. A program all my previous work has been leading towards.” He let out a sarcastic snort. “My life’s work.” He glanced up at Ingrid.
“Who else was working with you?”
“Shouldn’t you be taking notes? Or recording our conversation?” She stared at him until he realized he hadn’t earned the right to ask questions. He bit his lip. “It’s vital you get the details straight.”
“No, it’s vital you do. Right now you’re shoveling a load of horseshit.”
He swallowed hard and looked at his hands. “Everything seemed to be going along swimmingly right up until the middle of the autumn term. Then Faber’s attitude changed. She wanted to be given more responsibility in the pr
ogram. Said she’d like to take a leading role in the planning of experiments, be more hands-on with the subjects.”
“What triggered the change?”
“I think she may have been bored. As I said, she’s a very bright young woman.” He sighed. “Unfortunately for me.”
“And you agreed?”
“I got the impression she wanted to compete with Lauren, prove herself smarter, more industrious and so on—a healthy rivalry can lead to greater discoveries. It’s happened many times in the history of experimental science. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that. So, yes—I agreed to her request, hoping the other students would up their game.”
“And did that happen?”
“After a short while one or two of the others came to me, complaining about the way Madison was behaving. The way she was treating them. Using them as if they were her research assistants.”
“And was Lauren one of them?”
“I’m forgetting—you never met Lauren. She was the sweetest… She wasn’t the complaining type.”
“So what did you do about the complaints?”
“I had a quiet word.”
“And did Madison modify her behavior?”
“Initially. But she’s a clever manipulator. On the surface things seemed to have changed; meanwhile Madison was busy devising other plans. Obviously I had no idea at the time.”
Ingrid would have labeled Younger paranoid if she hadn’t had so many misgivings about Faber herself.
“Things came to a head in January. Madison wanted to work more and more closely with me. Normally I would have been thrilled to be sharing the work with such a talented student, but… well, I didn’t really like her. She was brilliant… and enthusiastic, but difficult. Too intense. Too demanding. Of my time. Of my attention.”
“Why January?”
He buried his face in his hands and shook his head. “I was so bloody stupid.” He pounded a fist on the table. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
“Did something happen over Christmas?”
He hesitated.
“You have one chance to tell me everything. I’d seize the opportunity if I were you.”