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

by Eva Hudson

  Ingrid focused her mind on the CCTV footage again. What was she missing? She replayed it in her head and saw the back of Kristyn’s head as she walked in front of the camera and toward the door. Then the girl had turned round, letting them see the left side of her face, before bending down. Why did she bend down? She wasn’t wearing sneakers, so she wasn’t tying shoelaces.

  It was the dog. She was bending down to pat the dog. Ingrid considered if this was significant. She thought about Cully, a good-natured creature that had wanted Truman’s love even when the actor had forcibly pushed him away. What had Tom told her about why the dog wasn’t there the following day? The vet’s. But the dog hadn’t appeared to be in pain or discomfort when she had seen him. Had Tom lied to her? Why?

  Something else was bothering her about Tom. She scrolled through her messages to check: not one of them was from Tom even though she’d called him and texted him several times that morning. It was now twelve hours later and he hadn’t bothered to get in touch. It was obvious that Truman Cooper was the driving force behind their move into parenthood, but Ingrid had thought Tom Kerrison cared enough about the baby, and about Kristyn, to ask for an update on the investigation.

  She focused again on her memories of the footage. What had that been in her hand? Nothing in the research showed she was Catholic, but it did look like a rosary. Might it have been a necklace? Might she have stolen something valuable from Tom and Truman, something that was bankrolling her disappearance?

  Not for the first time, Ingrid tried to put herself in Kristyn’s shoes—it was five o’clock in the morning, in a strange city, and she was close to giving birth for the first time. She thought again about what Kristyn had left behind when she’d walked out on Tom and Truman: money, a comfortable bed behind high-security gates, hot showers… The shower, that was it, Kristyn had had a shower. She’d had wet hair when she’d left. Surely, if she was planning on walking the streets, she’d have dried her hair? Or not washed it in the first place.

  Picturing the footage again, Ingrid finally saw what she’d been missing: Kristyn hadn’t looked frightened, or even concerned. Ingrid had never been eight months pregnant, but she imagined the prospect of leaving that comfortable house and wandering the streets with wet hair would not have been a pleasant one for a woman so close to giving birth, yet Kristyn’s face didn’t show a trace of apprehension.

  And that meant one thing: Kristyn Bowers had been picked up.

  32

  “Criminal division.” Jennifer’s voice had lost some of its usual sparkle: she was obviously working hard.

  “It’s me again.”

  “Hey, Ingrid.”

  “She was picked up. I’m sure of it. Kristyn was picked up. The question is, who by?”

  Ingrid could hear Don in the background calling yet another maternity unit.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, I did. I guess I’m just surprised. I mean, she doesn’t know anyone in London, at least no one we’ve found.”

  A siren drifted up to Ingrid from the streets below. “That’s because we’ve been looking in the wrong place. Have you still got the flight manifest?”

  “Um, I must have. It was an attachment to an email. Hold on a moment.”

  “I’m thinking that, if we can’t find a family connection to London, and there are no social media, no commercial, no anything ties to London, then the only person she knows in this city is someone she met on the plane.” Ingrid’s words were running together with excitement. Not even riding country roads at a hundred miles per hour could beat the thrill of prying open a case.

  “OK,” Jennifer said, “I’m looking at it now. Kate-Lynn, sorry, that’s just the name on the list, I do know we’re talking about Kristyn here, she was in an aisle seat, 57G. Back of the plane, right-hand side, where there are a few rows with just two seats together. I’m guessing they, like, put the pregnant girl near the restroom.”

  Ingrid willed her to stop prattling and just tell her who Kristyn was sitting next to.

  “And in 57H, so the window seat, is a Gwyneth Jones. How many Gwyneth Joneses do you think there are in London?”

  “You’re about to find out. And if you don’t find one in London, widen the search to the south-east of England. Obviously, a name like that, she might have got on a connecting flight to Wales, but just see what you can find out, will you?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Ingrid was relieved Kristyn had been sitting next to a woman. It made it more likely that she would have said ‘if you need anything while you’re in town, call me’ or that they had talked for hours about birth plans and baby names.

  The moment her screen went dark, Ingrid tapped it back into life and scrolled through her contacts until she remembered that she hadn’t programed Truman Cooper’s number into her phone. She felt her rear pants pockets for the card Manuela had given her in Islington that morning. It wasn’t there. Damn. Had it fallen out in the back of an ambulance? In the ER? She slipped a hand inside a jacket pocket, it wasn’t there either. She tried the other pocket and exhaled as she retrieved a bent business card, blackened at the edges where it had rubbed against the new leather inside her pocket. She looked at the number Manuela had written down and noted the horizontal lines through the sevens in the continental style.

  “Who is this?” Truman Cooper’s tone was hostile.

  “Special Agent Skyberg.”

  “At fucking last. Where the fuck have you been?” The expletives had returned to his vocabulary.

  “Sir,” she was tempted to tell him she’d been knocked out, that she’d spent the afternoon unconscious, but calculated it wouldn’t elicit sympathy, only accusations of incompetence. “I didn’t want to call you until I had news for you.”

  “Well, you don’t sound like you’ve got any. If you’d have found her, you’d have said so by now.”

  Ingrid took a deep breath, reminding herself to stay calm in the face of his temper. “My team has been making progress.” Ingrid waited for him to say something like ‘go ahead’ or ‘have you’, but there was just silence. She looked at the screen to make sure the call hadn’t been terminated. “Would you rather I spoke to Mr Kerrison? Do you want to put him on the line?”

  “Mr Kerrison,” he said through gritted teeth, “is in Milan, or Rome, or I don’t fucking know where.”

  “He’s gone away? At a time like this?” Ingrid was shocked. “At least you’ve got Cully for company.”

  “The dog? The fucking dog? Fuck knows where the dog is. The vet’s, most likely, but I am not paying you to talk to me about my goddamn pet.”

  “Sir, Mr Cooper, you are not paying me. I am a federal agent.” She could almost hear him bristle. He acted as if the entire world was on his payroll, and it was possible that in his world, almost everyone he met was.

  “Are you calling to tell me where my son is, or not?”

  The conversation was going badly, but she needed to keep him talking. Right now, Truman Cooper was holding the most promising lead in his hand and the last thing Ingrid needed was for the actor to hang up or, worse, drop his phone in the sink and run the faucet. She tipped her head back, looked up at the darkening sky and took a deep, centering breath. “Mr Cooper, I think you are currently holding the key to the case, quite literally. When the cash was taken from your jacket, was your phone also in your pocket?”

  “Yes. Yes it was.” His tone had changed. She had engaged his curiosity and in doing so had tempered his anger.

  “I have good reason to think she was picked up from outside your house. That means it is likely she called someone. We know she left her phone in Los Angeles, so I think she must have used yours.”

  He didn’t say anything. At least he wasn’t swearing.

  “Can you check the call history? See if your phone was used that night after you went to bed?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to do that while I am on the goddamn phone?”

  Another calming breath. She wasn’t about
to become his technology adviser. “If it’s easier, hang up, check the call log and then call me back.”

  The line went dead. Ingrid’s relief at no longer being on the receiving end of Truman Cooper’s temper was equal to her anxiety that he wouldn’t call back. She turned the ringer back on. What if he found a number, called it, and did something reckless? Ingrid puffed out her cheeks and exhaled.

  No wonder his career had fallen off a cliff: it was amazing anyone at all was prepared to work with him. Kristyn giving birth in a jurisdiction where Truman and Tom would have to go through a formal adoption procedure wasn’t such a terrible idea. At least then Cooper would be subjected to a psych test. She had worked with enough vulnerable children to know the damage a parent with a quicksilver temper could inflict.

  Ingrid glanced down at her phone, hoping to see the screen illuminate before she heard it ring. Nothing. Come on! Maybe Truman Cooper was so dependent on help that he didn’t even know how his phone worked. It had only been a couple of minutes, Ingrid told herself, give him a chance. The wind picked up, ruffling her hair: the weather was definitely turning. She buttoned her jacket, the buttonholes stiff with newness, then belted it.

  Her phone lit up.

  “Agent Skyberg.”

  “Four-thirty AM, two-minute call.”

  Heat surged up through Ingrid’s body. At last. “And you have the number?”

  “You know, I’ve played a cop a few times, but I never knew it could be so exciting.”

  “Mr Cooper. The number?”

  “How the hell am I supposed to give you a number while I’m making a goddamn call?”

  He was forty-nine, not eighty-nine.

  “Hang up, check the number, write it down, call me back.”

  “Couldn’t I just give you the name of the company she called? Wouldn’t that do?”

  “You called them?”

  “No, they’re programed into my phone. It’s Jupiter Cars. She called a taxi. You were right, agent, she was picked up.”

  Either the quickening breeze or the breakthrough raised the hairs on Ingrid’s skin. “That’s your car service?”

  “She got a cab.” The relief in his voice was palpable. It was just possible that this difficult, rude man might be a decent human when he wasn’t tormented about the whereabouts of his unborn child. “They’ll tell you where they took her, I’m sure they will. Very discreet, very helpful. She might even be home for breakfast.”

  She wanted to tell him not to get his hopes up, but this was good news, the best news the investigation had had in two days. “I’m going to call them right now,” Ingrid promised. She started walking toward the stairs down onto the roof terrace a floor below. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  Ingrid took the stairs two at a time, eager to get to her desk and move the investigation up a gear. She reached the fire exit and felt for the door handle only to discover that there wasn’t one. It only opened from the inside. Which was a problem, because the strategically positioned piece of folded card must have been dislodged by the breeze.

  She was trapped.

  33

  Jen and Don’s lines were both constantly busy, which was just as it should be given the work Ingrid had asked them to do. She considered calling the main switchboard, but decided she’d really rather not be known as the FBI agent who locked herself on the roof: her best bet was finding an open window. The roof terrace wrapped right around the top floor of the building. How many windows did that give her access to? Thirty? Fifty, maybe? Statistically that was pretty good odds. It had been a warm day; someone in one of those offices would have left their window ajar.

  “Can you give me a number for Jupiter Cars in London, please?” she asked the operator as she tried to open a window into a small office.

  “Would you like me to put you through?” the operator asked. “There is an additional charge for this service.”

  Ingrid couldn’t give a damn about the cost. “Yes, please.” The window was jammed. She carried on round the roof terrace, turning the corner of the building so that the trees of Grosvenor Square came into view.

  “Jupiter Cars, can I have your address please?”

  Ingrid explained that she didn’t want a car, only information. She told the call handler that she was phoning from the US embassy and that she was involved in helping track down a vulnerable pregnant woman. “You sent a car to Narrow Street in Wapping at five-fifteen yesterday morning. Thursday September 5th. I need to know the address you took the passenger to.”

  “One moment.”

  Ingrid peered over the wall down to the square below where there was, as always, a group of protestors with placards. Either they wanted the US to get involved in a conflict, or to get the hell out of one. She thought she could see a couple of them wearing orange jumpsuits: another Guantanamo event. Ingrid reached a window that had been left open a fraction. It moved when she tried to shift it. She peered inside. It was a huge room, like the ballroom on a cruise ship: it was one of the entertaining suites. She opened the window and climbed inside.

  “Hello,” the call handler said. “Are you still there?”

  “Yes I am.”

  “I spoke to my manager, and she says we cannot give out that sort of information without a warrant. Client privacy, you see.” Truman had said they were discreet.

  Ingrid stepped gingerly over an enormous geometric rug, keen for her footsteps not to attract attention: she didn’t really want to be caught in one of the embassy’s prestigious reception rooms without a reason. “Look,” she said, keeping her voice low, “I am an FBI agent. I am investigating the disappearance of a vulnerable young woman, and it’s not me who needs your help, it’s her. If you won’t do it for me, do it for her.”

  “Yes, well, you say you’re an FBI agent but, you know, there’s nothing to stop me saying I’m Beyoncé, is there?”

  Ingrid’s heart began to pound with the frustration, but now wasn’t the time to get angry. “Please, there is a young woman who is missing. She’s extremely vulnerable and she needs your help. If you’re not willing to share this vital information with me right now, please hang up, call the US embassy in London and ask to be put through to the FBI’s Legal Attaché office. They will connect you to me. My name is Special Agent Ingrid Skyberg. Then will you believe that I am who I say I am?”

  “Is this a joke?”

  “Please,” Ingrid knew she sounded desperate. “Call the embassy, verify my identity and then please, please help me.”

  “All righty.”

  Ingrid’s jaw was clenched in frustration. The one big, fat, juicy lead, the only way of knowing for sure where Kristyn Bowers had disappeared to, and some operator from a car service was being obstructive. Ingrid gripped her phone so tightly she risked crushing it.

  She crept past a grand piano and reached a set of double doors that had to open out into the main corridor. She tried the handle. Locked. She tried both handles together. Still locked. There was another set of double doors at the other end of the room. Ingrid stepped softly past a series of portraits of dead presidents to reach the other exit.

  Why hadn’t her phone rung? Had the woman at Jupiter Cars not bothered, or had the preppy intern in the bullpen put the call through to her desk even though he knew she wasn’t in the office?

  She tried the handles. The second set of doors was also locked. Damn. This was getting ridiculous: the only way out was back through the window and onto the roof terrace. Once she was outside again, she checked her phone. She couldn’t wait any longer and called them again, this time faking her best Portuguese accent.

  “Jupiter Cars, may I have your address please?”

  Ingrid was relieved to hear it was a different call handler. “Good evening. This is Manuela, calling for Truman Cooper.” Already Ingrid realized she’d made a mistake: Manuela would never bother to say ‘good evening’. “He ask me to call.”

  “Hi, Manuela, this is Sofia. What’s your destination?”

  “I don�
��t need car, I need your help.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” This conversation was going much better than the last one.

  “You sent car here yesterday morning, about five o’clock. He want to know where you drop off passenger.” Ingrid feared her Portuguese was veering dangerously north-east toward Russia.

  “OK, let me see. Was it cash or account?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Yesterday… Narrow Street… OK, that job was given to Olek… Yup, it was charged to your account… drop off in Victoria. Anything else you need?”

  Ingrid was so excited she thought she might yelp. “You have the address?”

  “It was Victoria station.” All her excitement evaporated. She had hoped for a street name and a house number. Victoria station was one of London’s busiest transit hubs.

  “Thank you, Sofia.”

  “Say hi to Truman for me. Tell him we’re all waiting for the new series.”

  Ingrid shoved her phone in her back pocket and leaned heavily against the roof terrace wall. What bad luck. What absolutely terrible luck. Victoria station. With those two words, the strongest lead she’d had since Kristyn went missing had been transformed into multiple, weaker leads: there must be hundreds of train stations reachable from Victoria, and Kristyn could have been headed for any one of them. Ingrid closed her eyes and forced all the air in her lungs out through pursed lips. She needed to find a way to narrow the search. Without help, without more time, she needed to be strategic. She needed to think clearly.

  “Put your hands in the air.”

  Ingrid turned sharply: ten feet further along the roof terrace was a marine holding a Beretta M9 and pointing it right at her head.

  34

  It was almost eleven o’clock by the time Ingrid made it to the Beaufort Club. She’d let Jennifer and Don go home around ten on the understanding they’d be back by 8am, then finished reading the briefing papers they’d prepared for her. She touched up her make-up before walking a few blocks south and entering one of the most exclusive clubs in London just as it started to rain. When security waved her through without question, she knew she was expected.