by Eva Hudson
She knew an agent working at the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico, a guy she did her training with. She should run through Wyatt’s profile with him, get a professional opinion.
But right now she wanted to track down Clifford Quigley. If her assessment of Wyatt’s psychological profile was even halfway accurate, Barbara Highsmith wouldn’t have been his first victim. And she sure as hell wouldn’t be his last.
22
The two a.m. security check of the third floor finally pried Ingrid from her desk. She hadn’t managed to track down Clifford Quigley, but she had discovered a John Doe who’d turned up dead just a few days after Darryl Wyatt’s first visit to the restaurant. The unidentified male was found over the state border in South Carolina and ended up in a morgue over a hundred miles away. It was possible the man lying in the chiller drawer wasn’t Clifford Quigley, but Ingrid knew she’d feel a lot easier once she’d found out one way or the other. She tried calling the local cops in South Carolina, but discovered the officer she needed to speak to wasn’t available. She made a note to try him again the next day.
Before she left the building, Ingrid put in a call to Mike Stiller, her one remaining contact at Bureau headquarters, to ask him to delve as deeply as he could into the history of ex-congresswoman Highsmith, especially the FBI investigation of the earlier poisoning attempt. Stiller had higher security clearance than Ingrid and he might just uncover something she couldn’t. By the time Ingrid returned to her hotel, it was already three in the morning. Less than five hours before she needed to head back to Grosvenor Square.
Early the next morning, when she shoved her hastily purchased breakfast on her desk, Ingrid couldn’t help wondering if a fold-up bed tucked away some place in the building might be a good idea. She kept a sleeping bag in a drawer just in case she had to stay over, a bed might make things a little more comfortable.
Isaac arrived before Jennifer, presumably still eager to impress.
“You want another crack at using those victim support skills of yours?” Ingrid asked.
“Absolutely. Yes please.”
“Great—we have a missing person case to investigate.”
“The one in Kilburn?”
“Jennifer told you about it?”
“Not exactly.” He looked down at his feet. “I overheard her taking down the details.”
“Nothing wrong with paying attention. Don’t worry about it.”
Ingrid actually felt a little sorry for him. He didn’t know Angela Tate would be accompanying them to the interview. He had no idea what was in store for him. If he could handle whatever awkward questions Tate might throw at him, he’d be able to cope with anything else that might come up in the course of his embassy work. After a dealing with an investigative reporter with a fearsome reputation of getting to the truth, however deeply it was buried, anything else would be child’s play.
Ingrid steeled herself for Tate’s arrival. She’d already decided to meet the journalist at the gate—it was too dangerous to have her setting foot inside the office. God only knew what precious nugget of information Tate might manage to glean from somebody’s desk. Or their trash can. The landline rang at a quarter before ten. Sure enough, Tate had arrived. She was certainly keen. Ingrid puffed out a breath and grabbed her jacket and purse.
“Ready, Isaac?”
They reached the lobby and found Angela Tate sitting in the main reception area. Her hair was a little wilder than usual and she’d chosen a particularly deep shade of red lipstick. It looked a little like dried blood. Tate must have wrangled her way inside the building, despite Ingrid’s strict instructions to the Marine manning the desk. Tate was obviously in a combative mood. It didn’t bode well for Isaac. Like a lamb to the slaughter.
“Agent Skyberg. I’m so glad you finally found me a window.” Tate’s gaze shifted to Isaac. “And who’s this charming young man?”
Isaac opened his mouth, but no words came.
“This is Isaac Coleman. He’ll be accompanying us today.” Ingrid smiled first at Tate then at Isaac. He still seemed completely lost for words.
Tate reached out her hand toward him. “I’m DCI Jane Tennyson—Special Branch. Here in an observational capacity only.”
Ingrid glared at her. What the hell did she think she was doing? It was bad enough having to include the reporter in an investigation, but introducing herself to Isaac as a cop? She’d better not try that with their interviewee. “Shall we?” Ingrid tore her admonishing stare from Tate’s face and ushered them outside onto the sidewalk. Less than a minute later the embassy car arrived to dispatch them to Kilburn.
Once they were settled in the car—Isaac had insisted he sit up front with the driver—Tate pulled out a notebook. “So what case are we starting with today? Unexplained death perhaps? Is that possible, statistically? Would you expect to get two in a single week? I do hope a visit to Fisher Krupps is on our itinerary.”
Ingrid lowered her voice. “What kind of stunt was that?”
“Stunt?”
“Introducing yourself as a cop?”
“A purely fictional one.”
“Makes no difference.”
“What possible harm can it do? It was only a bit of fun.” She dragged a hand through her hair and tilted her head back. “My little joke was totally wasted on you anyway.” She glanced out the window. “So, is the first stop Fisher Krupps?”
“Let’s just see how we get on with our initial interview, shall we?”
“Initial interview?”
“A missing persons case.”
Tate turned in her seat to face Ingrid. “Tell me you’re joking. Do you mean I’ve schlepped all the way to Grosvenor Square for a missing person? I presume a child’s disappeared.” She stared into Ingrid’s face. “Something serious.”
Ingrid said nothing.
“Oh please.”
“I don’t have much detail yet. I do know it’s a male aged thirty-seven who’s gone missing. Besides, you said you wanted ‘warts-and-all’ access. That’s just what you’ve got. Welcome to my world.”
“But your world also contains a City trader who died in suspicious circumstances. Why can’t I observe you on that investigation? Maybe we should rearrange for another day.”
“One time offer.”
“Need I remind you just how indebted to me you are?” Tate didn’t bother to lower her voice.
Ingrid glanced toward Isaac. Thankfully he was too busy talking to the driver to eavesdrop on her conversation. “You’re making this really difficult for me.”
“Them’s the breaks. Perhaps you should never have come to me asking for help. Perhaps I should have refused to have anything to do with your highly dubious scheme. No wait, I don’t mean dubious do I? I mean illegal.”
Two weeks ago Ingrid had thought long and hard before asking Tate for help, she was well aware of the journalist’s reputation for ruthlessness. At the time she’d had little choice but to get her involved. Right now she was deeply regretting the decision. The way things were going, she wasn’t entirely sure her debt would ever be repaid. “We’ll speak to the wife of the missing man. I’m already breaking the rules letting you come along.”
“Don’t worry—I’ll behave myself.”
Ingrid wasn’t sure Tate even knew how.
They arrived at the house a couple of blocks south of Kilburn High Road just ten minutes later. Before they got out the car, Ingrid held on to Tate’s arm. “You are here in an observational capacity only—we are clear on that? I’ll be doing the talking.”
“Don’t fret. Do as much talking as you like. Quiet as a mouse, that’s me.
23
After a half hour of quietly observing the interview, barely making a note in her reporter’s pad, Angela Tate stood up. “Would you excuse us for a moment, madam?” She put a hand under Ingrid’s elbow and dragged her to her feet and all the way to the front door. “My God—what are we all doing here wasting our time? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you
set this whole thing up. A little crumb to throw to the annoying journalist.”
Isaac hurried down the hallway toward them, his face crumpled in confusion.
“Don’t say a word,” Tate warned him. “You might look decorative, but my God you’re as useless as a sunhat in a monsoon.” She stared at Ingrid. “Is this really how you spend an average day? Doing something this… mind-bogglingly boring?”
“Most of my work is mundane, procedural. I’m sorry to disappoint.”
“Oh sure. You’re not telling me this investigation isn’t something that pretty boy couldn’t handle on his own?”
“Wait a minute!” Isaac said. Tate had obviously hit a nerve.
“You’re right. Isaac can handle this one from here.” Ingrid turned to her eager apprentice. “Are you OK with that?”
“Absolutely!” He eyed Tate defiantly.
Brave boy, Ingrid thought.
“Get as many details as you can about where her husband might have taken himself off to. Be as sympathetic as you can.”
“Don’t worry—I won’t let you down.”
“Good. You OK to get back to embassy on public transportation?”
“Sure.”
Ingrid and Tate quickly exited the property. Once outside, Tate lit a cigarette.
“I can’t believe that’s the sort of thing you’d normally investigate.” She shook her head and took a long drag on her cigarette as they walked back to the car.
“Where can I drop you?” Ingrid asked as she opened a rear passenger door.
“What?”
“Back at the Evening News building?”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Let’s just agree that performance in there was the rather tedious short before the main feature. You want to know where to drop me? How about Fisher Krupps, EC3?”
Ingrid’s phone started buzzing in her pocket. She checked the screen: an “out of area” number. She really didn’t want to speak to Marshall right now, not with Tate breathing down her neck. “Excuse me, would you? Feel free to wait in the car.”
Tate stood her ground, staring at Ingrid through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Ingrid answered her phone and marched up the street.
“This really isn’t a good time.”
There was a pause at the other end of the line, then, “In that case, I’ll keep the information to myself.”
“Mike?”
“Expecting somebody else?”
“What time is it there?”
“Do you want to know what I found out about Barbara Highsmith or not?”
“Please, I do—but I’m not at my desk. Could you also email the details?”
“You do know I’m not your personal Stateside secretary, huh? You only ever check in with me when you’ve got a problem.”
Although Ingrid accepted that was true, she also knew that Special Agent Mike Stiller loved a challenge. “You know how much I appreciate any help you can give me.” She turned to see what mischief Tate was getting up to. The reporter was leaning against the hood of the embassy sedan, staring at her cell phone.
“OK—as long as we’re clear how much you owe me. There’s a lot of stuff here, so I’ll just give you the edited highlights.” He took a deep breath. “Barbara Highsmith, born Barbara Jane Reese, grew up in a nice middle class home, attended Wellesley College for her first degree—she majored in English—and then went on to study law at Harvard. Didn’t graduate top of the class, but she was in the top third. After law school she went to work for a law firm in Boston, lasted there four years before switching sides to go work in the District Attorney’s office. In Philadelphia.” Finally Stiller took a breath.
In the brief lull, Ingrid took the opportunity to interrupt. “Anything interesting in her medical records?” The medical records of an ex-congresswomen were highly classified—only an agent with Stiller’s security clearance could access them.
“Are you referring to the peanut allergy?”
“Dig up anything interesting about the earlier allergic reaction that nearly killed her?”
“The investigation was snuffed out pretty much before it began. Foul play was dismissed as a possibility right away.”
“It was? Why?”
“The agents were directed to drop it. By people close to the congresswoman herself. I can’t find out any more than that. There’s nothing on file. And I had to call in a couple favors from the D.C. field office to find out that much.”
“It happened in Washington?”
“You didn’t know that?”
“My information is as sketchy as yours.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence in my intel gathering skills.”
“I know you’re the best agent there is for intel—why do you think I keep hassling you for information?”
“Because you got nobody else?”
“There must be something more about it you can find out.”
“The general consensus is it was hushed up because she didn’t want to jeopardize her re-election prospects. Doesn’t do to have a secret peanut allergy leak out if you want to retain your seat representing the peanut capital of the USA.”
“I guess not.” She glanced up at Tate again. The journalist seemed to be behaving herself. “Did you find any link between Wall Street and Highsmith? Any Wall Street traders in her past?”
“Not that I’ve been able to find.”
“Oh.”
“The legal firm she worked for specialized in tax law, I think that’s the closest she got to the world of high finance. Helping corporations pay as little tax as possible. What angle are you working, anyway?”
“It’s not so much an angle as a wild stab in the dark.” It didn’t look like she was going to be able to establish a direct link between Matthew Fuller and Barbara Highsmith. Maybe the poisoning thing was a just a coincidence. But coincidences made Ingrid feel uncomfortable. She glanced toward Tate, who was mid-yawn. When Tate saw her, the reporter tapped a finger against her wrist. Ingrid held up her hand. “So apart from the tax attorneys, nothing else financial?”
“I said there was no link to Wall Street. If you’d read her file on the database a little more carefully, you would have discovered she worked as an Assistant US Attorney.”
“I thought she was at the District Attorney’s office.”
“She was. Then she moved on to the US Attorney’s office in Washington state.
Dammit. Ingrid had conflated the ex-congresswoman’s sojourn at the district attorney’s with the time she’d devoted to the US Attorney’s Office. How had she missed that? “So she was dealing with federal cases?”
“For seven years in total. Started out in Spokane then transferred to Seattle two years later. Could be she dealt with plenty of finance-related cases. But it would have been small beer. Nothing newsworthy.”
“Equally it could be just what I’m looking for. Can you get me a list of all her cases during her time at the US Attorney’s Office?”
“Oh come on, Skyberg. I got my own work to do, you know.”
“I promise this is the last request I’ll make.”
“Oh sure.”
“Is that a yes?”
The line went very quiet.
“OK.”
“Great—call me when you have the list.” She hung up before Stiller had a chance to say goodbye, or complain, and started wandering back toward Tate, trying to work out how the hell she was going to get rid of her.
Tate ground the stub of her second cigarette under a boot. “What was that all about?”
“I can’t say.”
“Off the record.”
Ingrid raised her eyebrows.
“Truly. Cross my heart.”
Ingrid doubted Tate had one. “I can’t go into the details. I was just checking some information with a colleague of mine back at Bureau HQ.”
“Something to do with the Fisher Krupps trader?”
“Not at all,” she lied.
“So—what was it then?”
“Another case—I told you, I can’t give you the details.” Her phone, still in her hand, started to buzz again.
“You are popular.” Tate eyed the phone.
“Maybe we should forget all about this.”
“I’ve cleared my diary for the day. I’m an optimist. I’m sure I’ll pick up something of interest during our time together. But right now I could murder a bacon sandwich.”
Ingrid turned away again and glanced at the screen. It was a call she couldn’t ignore.
24
“Detective Fraser, thank you so much for getting back to me.” Ingrid tried to keep her voice controlled and even, but she was inwardly cursing him for previously ignoring her calls. “What can you tell me?”
“Nothing. There have been no new developments.”
“You haven’t even identified the victim?” Ingrid walked down the street, further away from Tate.
“It’s proving more difficult than we thought.”
“Still nothing back from Latvian police about the tattoo?”
“You’re assuming she had a record.”
“What about the media over there—have the police been liaising with the newspapers and TV?”
“I haven’t seen any evidence of it. She’s not a priority for them. We don’t even know for sure that she was Latvian.”
I know. “Extend your inquiries to include Lithuania and Estonia then.”
“I’ll have a word with the SIO.” From the noncommittal tone of Fraser’s voice, Ingrid doubted he’d do anything of the sort.
“Maybe I should speak to him.” She’d actually already tried that approach. The senior officer running the case was ignoring her calls too. It was possible Fraser knew that. “Are you in the incident room? Is the SIO there with you now?”
“He… er…”
Ingrid could hear mumbling in the background.
“He’s just had to step out. Important meeting.”
“I don’t understand, if you have nothing new to tell me, why are you even calling?”
“To be honest… to stop you calling me. You have to believe I’ll get in touch if something of interest comes up.”