The Ingrid Skyberg Mystery Series: Books 1-4: The Ingrid Skyberg Series Boxset

by Eva Hudson

  For a full five minutes Ingrid continued to watch nothing happen at the open window. She imagined how frustrated Jack Gurley had to be feeling, handcuffed in the patrol car, watching police officers run up and down the street, and not knowing why. He was so close to apprehending his fugitive and yet not allowed anywhere near the action.

  The frustration was getting to Ingrid too. She felt useless. Tommy was less than two hundred yards from her and she couldn’t help save him. She hoped he was all right and that Foster wouldn’t decide to make some final stand and take his boy down with him if he thought all was lost.

  Did the Met negotiator really know what she was doing? Was Kyle Foster even making demands? Maybe they should get Carrie Foster to speak to him. Hearing a familiar voice might make all the difference. Ingrid released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Kyle Foster talking to his wife could also make matters a whole lot worse. Besides, Ingrid wasn’t even sure whether or not Carrie Foster was still under sedation.

  She tried calling Radcliffe and wasn’t surprised when his cell went straight to voicemail. As approaching the surveillance van to try to speak to him wasn’t an option, she walked over to one of the uniformed officers. The man was wearing a Kevlar vest and had an earpiece in his left ear. She showed him her badge. “Any chance you know what’s going on in there?”

  He shook his head and said, “I’m just waiting for orders.” Then he walked away.

  Ingrid looked toward the crowd standing at the nearest cordon. Previously silenced by the recent activity at the house, they had started murmuring quietly amongst themselves again.

  Except for one woman.

  One woman standing close to the barrier had just shouted something at the cop manning the line. Ingrid jogged down to the cordon to see what the woman’s problem was.

  “I’m seventy-eight years old!” she hollered. “My husband fought for this country. You have no right keeping me from my home.”

  The cordon cop leaned close to the woman and said something very quietly in her ear.

  “What would I do on the hard floor in the leisure center? With my hips? What is the matter with you, suggesting such a thing?”

  Ingrid detected the merest hint of a Polish accent, almost eroded away after many years living in London. “Hello, ma’am. Has the officer explained what’s going on to you?”

  “He says I can’t go back to my own house. I’ve been sitting in the hospital all night at my husband’s bedside, on the most uncomfortable chair ever made, and now this policeman wants me to stand in the street for God knows how long.”

  “It’s not safe for you to return right now.” Ingrid pointed to the open window. “You see that curtain blowing there? Inside that house is a man the police need to speak to. He has a little boy with him. He’s holding the boy hostage.” As Ingrid made the statement she realized it wasn’t strictly accurate. As far as she knew, Foster had made no demands. And it wasn’t at all clear his son was being held against his will.

  “Hostage? The poor man has just lost his wife. He’s done nothing wrong.”

  Ingrid stared into the woman’s face, realizing she had to be suffering from some form of dementia. She was about to suggest to the cop that he really ought to get the confused old lady somewhere she could rest up until the situation was resolved, when a loud crash sounded from the sidewalk outside the house. A bottle had smashed on the hard pavement.

  “Dear God.” The old woman crossed herself. “I hope he’s not smashing the place up. I didn’t take a deposit.”

  Ingrid had already started to walk back toward the house. She stopped. “You know the man in that apartment?” she said, turning back.

  “Didn’t I just say that? He’s lost his wife. That is my house. I want to get back there.”

  “You rented the room to the man with the boy?” Ingrid asked.

  “Who are you anyway? You don’t look like a police officer, and you have an American accent. What has all this got to do with you?”

  “I work for the American embassy. I’m here because the man and boy are American.”

  The woman wheezed out a cackling laugh. “Sure they are… and I’m Peruvian.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That his wife died and he’ll be taking his son back home, just as soon as his family send him the money for his plane ticket.”

  “And where did he say home was?”

  “He did tell me… Iran maybe… or Turkey. I don’t remember. And I don’t care, as long as I get my rent.”

  “What does the man look like?”

  “I don’t know, average. Dark skin, dark hair, average height.”

  “And the boy?”

  “Similar, except his hair is very curly.”

  Ingrid lifted the blue and white police tape high in the air and guided the old lady beneath it. “I need you to come with me.”

  “I can go home?”

  “You have to speak to some people first.”

  The uniformed cop ran from the other end of the cordon towards them. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’ll take full responsibility. Call DCI Radcliffe if you don’t believe me.” The tape had gotten caught in the woman’s hair, Ingrid gently lifted it off. But before she got a chance to start walking her down the street, a car screeched to a halt on the other side of the cordon. A familiar figure climbed out.

  Ingrid’s heart sank.

  19

  As ever, Angela Tate had managed to arrive at a crime scene ahead of her competitors. Though the sun hadn’t yet risen and the street was bathed in a grayish half-light, the journalist spotted Ingrid immediately. She pushed her way to the front of the cordon. Just getting out of the taxi was the overweight photographer who seemed to accompany Tate on most of her assignments. He started arguing with the cab driver.

  “Don’t run away, agent. Not without a quick comment for the Evening News.” The reporter stuck out an arm and shoved her digital recorder into Ingrid’s face.

  “No comment.” Ingrid tried to move away but the old woman resisted.

  “You’re from the newspaper?” She looked Tate up and down. “My husband always used to read the Evening News, before his eyesight failed him. So much better than the free papers they give away everywhere now.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more.” Tate gave her an uncharacteristically genuine smile, which faded quickly as she turned back to Ingrid. “Given that you’re here, I can only assume the man inside that house is First Lieutenant Kyle Foster.”

  Ingrid shook her head. “You’re wrong.”

  “How wet behind the ears do you actually think I am? I thought you knew me better than that by now.”

  “OK—I’ll give you a comment,” Ingrid said, “but then I really have to go.”

  Tate looked at her suspiciously.

  “Neither Kyle Foster nor his son are in that house.”

  Tate narrowed her eyes. “You really expect me to believe that?”

  “Believe what you like. I’ve got to get this lady home.”

  “Yes—yes that’s right,” the woman said. “I need to go to bed.”

  Ingrid led the woman to the first patrol car, explained to the cop there that she had new information for DCI Radcliffe about the hostage situation, then waited while he ran to the surveillance van and banged on the door. Radcliffe’s pale, sleep-deprived face was thunderous when he emerged from the back of the truck. Nevertheless, he hurried to Ingrid, frowning at the old woman as he approached.

  “It’s not Foster,” Ingrid said, cutting straight to the chase.

  “Who’s this?”

  Ingrid realized she’d never asked the woman her name.

  “Katarzyna Tysowski,” the old lady said.

  “Mrs Tysowski is the landlady of the property. The man she rented the room to looked nothing like Kyle Foster.”

  “Is that all you have?”

  “There’s more, but first of all, tell me what was thrown out of the window
just now.”

  “A bottle of whiskey.”

  “Whiskey? Maybe it wasn’t Iran—where he came from,” Mrs Tysowski said. Then, at Ingrid’s prompting, repeated to the DCI exactly what she’d just told her.

  When she was done, Radcliffe let out a low groan. “You’re certain?” he asked the old woman.

  “I’m not senile.”

  Ingrid turned to her and smiled. “Please excuse us for a moment, ma’am.” She walked up the street a few paces and Radcliffe joined her a moment later. “You have to go in there. Put an end to this now. The press have already arrived. The longer you leave it, the worse—”

  Radcliffe cut her off with a raised palm. “Thank you for pointing out the obvious for me.” He lifted both hands to his face and stood there in the middle of the street, rocking back on his heels. “This bloody case. I swear to God…”

  Five minutes later a team of twenty officers dressed in riot gear stormed into the property. Five minutes after that one of them emerged with a boy in his arms. A female cop wrapped a blanket around the boy’s shoulders and carried him to a waiting police car.

  “Have you found someone to look after him?” Ingrid asked Radcliffe.

  “His mother’s on her way.” He saw Ingrid’s puzzled expression. “Alive and well. Estranged from the boy’s father, waiting for the divorce to come through.”

  “So he had abducted his son?”

  “We got that much right, at least.” He shook his head. “The whole thing’s been a bloody fiasco from start to finish.”

  Jack Gurley couldn’t have put it better himself, Ingrid thought. “I’m guessing you don’t have a problem releasing my colleague now?”

  “God no—you’re welcome to him.” He stopped a passing constable and requested Gurley be released immediately.

  Jack Gurley emerged from the patrol car, stretching his arms and legs, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had been. Ingrid quickly brought him up to speed.

  “The guy in the house sounds nothing like Foster.”

  “I think the witness’ description relied a little too heavily on the Spiderman pajamas,” Ingrid said.

  “You’re kidding me.” Gurley glared at Radcliffe who was now standing on the other side of the street, issuing orders to a group of uniformed officers. “All this manpower for nothing?”

  “I know—it’s frustrating as hell. But what else could the police do? Ignore it? This was just an unfortunate case of mistaken identity. God knows it’s happened to me before.”

  “But we’re no further forward.” Gurley shook his head. “I’ve got to get out of here.” He strode across the street, grabbed his heavy backpack, then headed at speed towards the cordon. Ingrid ran after him.

  As they reached the line of police tape at the end of the street, Ingrid could see Angela Tate moving fast in her direction, an angry expression on her face.

  “Do you think I like standing around in the cold for no bloody reason at all?” the reporter said.

  “Not my problem. I gave you a statement—you chose to ignore it,” Ingrid told her.

  Gurley’s cell phone started to ring. He answered the call and turned away, leaving Ingrid to deal with Tate on her own.

  “Tell me one thing,” Tate said, “off the record.”

  “You think I’m ever going to believe that, coming from you?”

  “I swear.”

  Ingrid pursed her lips. When she tried to move away, Tate quickly wrapped her fingers around her arm.

  “Do you think Tommy Foster is still alive?”

  “No comment.” She peeled off the reporter’s hand only to be grabbed again around the wrist. This time by Gurley. He yanked at her arm and dragged her under the police tape and through the crowd of onlookers.

  “What is it, for God’s sake?” Ingrid pulled her arm out of his grasp.

  Gurley said nothing until they were safely out of Tate’s earshot. “We have a lead. A sighting. And this time I can actually trust the intel.”

  “Why?”

  “It came from one of my men at the base.”

  20

  Jack Gurley was forced to duck very low as he ran across the helipad to the waiting Pave Hawk helicopter the US Air Force had sent from RAF Freckenham. Slung across his shoulder was his clanking backpack. Ingrid couldn’t help wondering what he’d purchased the day before at the department store. He hadn’t volunteered the information and she didn’t want to seem so curious that she needed to ask. With just a spare pair of panties, a tee shirt and a toothbrush stuffed into her purse, she was starting to feel a little under-equipped for their trip.

  She followed him to the dove-gray chopper. As she approached the big helicopter—it was easily over fifty-foot long—she was reminded of the last time she had flown in one. It was during her first ever case at the embassy. Her stomach lurched a little as she recalled the turbulence they’d endured on the flight back to London, as they tried and failed to outrun a big winter storm. She swallowed hard. At least the weather today was a lot calmer.

  Once they were safely harnessed inside, the helicopter rose into the air, and Ingrid spotted Angela Tate standing in the road that led to the helipad in Battersea, looking disheveled and maybe even a little defeated. Ingrid felt a twinge of pity for the reporter.

  The feeling soon passed.

  The journalist must have followed them all the way from Willesden, no doubt determined to get a better story for the front page of the Evening News than a child being snatched by a disgruntled father from his estranged wife. Tate would be on the hunt for bigger headlines and wouldn’t stop until she got them. Ingrid was pretty sure that the reporter’s expense account wouldn’t stretch to hiring a helicopter of her own. For a while at least, their destination would remain classified information.

  Gurley tried to fit his long legs into the cramped space, twisting his body one way then the other. He finally resorted to resting his feet on the backpack with his knees up somewhere around head height.

  “Maybe you didn’t need to bring all that gear,” Ingrid said, adjusting her headset so it sat more snugly on her head.

  “I wasn’t going to leave it behind—I just bought this stuff. Besides, we don’t know how Foster is surviving. He’s probably living off the land, sleeping outdoors. You might find some of this stuff useful if we have to track him.”

  “I might?”

  “I can get all the supplies I need from the base.” He thudded the backpack with the heel of his boot. “Think of this as a small gift from me to you.”

  Gee, I’m touched.

  “On that subject—tracking—I want to make it clear now, I can’t have you slowing me down,” Gurley told her, his expression solemn. “No offense. It could get very physical.”

  “I run five miles most days—do you?”

  “It’s not just about stamina, you need strength too.”

  “Don’t you worry about me.” She managed to resist the urge to have him squeeze her biceps just to prove her point.

  Gurley didn’t comment. His silence told her plenty. Although she might not be capable of overpowering him in an arm wrestling contest, she was damn sure she could outrun him. But there was nothing to gain in getting pissed at his attitude, so she got back on topic. “Assuming this sighting is reliable—”

  “It is.”

  “OK—I guess we’ll find out soon enough. Assuming it was Foster, why would he return to Freckenham? Why get anywhere near the base? Do you think he’s planning to turn himself in?”

  “He could have walked into any station house to do that.”

  “Not if he thinks he can be tried in the US if he surrenders to US personnel. Maybe he just wants to go home.”

  “You’re still making the mistake of assuming he’s thinking rationally. He’s gone postal—nothing he does now can be predicted with any measure of accuracy. We don’t know what’s going through the crazy S.O.B.’s head.”

  Something didn’t fit with the crazed airman picture Gurley was painting. Right now
Ingrid couldn’t put her finger on it. “So why do you think he’s here?”

  “Maybe to seek revenge?”

  “On who?”

  Gurley shrugged.

  “You think he really might want to hurt the people on the base?”

  “Worst case scenario—maybe some folks in the village too.”

  “Then we really should inform the local cops.” Ingrid didn’t want get the Suffolk force involved, but wasn’t sure she could keep the new intel from them.

  “The local cops were supposed to be keeping the train and bus stations under surveillance. They didn’t do a real good job, did they?”

  “Assuming this sighting is reliable.”

  “Like you say—we’ll find out soon enough.”

  The journey from London to Suffolk was uneventful. Ingrid’s attempts at engaging Gurley in any conversation that wasn’t directly connected to the hunt for Foster were either ignored completely—more than once Gurley feigned sleep—or slapped down as either irrelevant or too damn personal. Silence was just fine with Ingrid. It was a relief to concentrate on the view out the window than make excruciating small talk.

  The chopper landed in a designated helicopter zone on the base and a jeep arrived within moments to convey them to a windowless low-rise block situated at the edge of the complex. One of Gurley’s sergeants escorted them to a stuffy room at the end of a long corridor. Inside was a man in his late thirties or early forties, a little overweight, dressed in civilian clothes. He was pacing up and down behind a table and four chairs.

  “Is that it? Am I going to the police station now?” He had an English accent, with a slight lilt to it. Ingrid supposed he was a local. The man had directed his question at Gurley, ignoring Ingrid completely.