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

by Eva Hudson

  Clad in black marble with gold accents and candles on every table, the Beaufort was somewhere between a Busby Berkeley set and a Prohibition speakeasy. Ingrid made her way through the room, passing between tables where—for the most part—young attractive women in spaghetti-strap dresses sat next to middle-aged men in sober suits. She scanned the room looking for a familiar face. He wasn’t there.

  She sat at a table as far away from the piano player as she could find and within moments a waiter arrived with an iced glass containing a double measure of vodka and a twist of lime. He set a folded card down next to her drink and retreated with a slight bow. Ingrid picked up the card.

  You’re late.

  She held it above the candle until it caught fire, dropping the charred remains on the table, extinguishing the last of the embers with the condensation from her glass. Only then did she take a sip. And then another. Exactly what she needed.

  The piano player announced he was taking a break, and while everyone else in the room greeted this news with polite applause, Ingrid was relieved. It wasn’t that the guy couldn’t sing—he absolutely could—it was that he’d been singing like it was his last night at Carnegie Hall. Maybe now she could do a little eavesdropping.

  The Beaufort had endured a few weeks of lurid headlines earlier in the year when Viktor Bazarov, the owner of a Kazakh mining company, had choked to death—on an olive, if the news reports were to be believed—in one of the club’s private booths. A tragic accident, according to the coroner; the work of the SVR, according to almost everyone else. Ingrid had expected to tune into conversations in Russian, or to strain to make out confessions in Ukrainian, but her ears were unwillingly drawn to the tones of a loud American a couple of tables away. The man’s slow, Southern drawl made her bristle: he sounded exactly like Marshall Claybourne. She had to twist round and stare hard to make sure her ex-fiancé wasn’t in the room.

  Satisfied it wasn’t him, she took another sip and exhaled deeply.

  “You should always wear those clothes.” Nick Angelis slid onto the chair next to hers. “Whatever the weather, whatever the occasion. Always. You look wonderful.”

  Ingrid didn’t know what to say.

  “Tough day?”

  Where did she start? Being drugged? Stabbing someone? Unconscious in the ER? Mistaken for a terrorist on the roof of one of the most heavily armed buildings in Europe? “A bit full-on.”

  “I was rather hoping you might have been here a little earlier.” He was wearing a pressed white shirt, open at the collar, dark denim jeans and a pair of Cuban heels. With his deep tan and firm jaw he resembled a lothario from a Mexican soap opera. It was a look she ought to find repulsive, yet her eyes were drawn to the point where the column of pearlized buttons on his shirt sank beneath the buckle of his belt.

  “And yet you waited for me none the less. Sweet of you.”

  “I’m here for work, agent.”

  “Of course you are.” She took another sip, letting the alcohol burn on her tongue before she swallowed. “Do you ever do anything for pleasure?” She regretted the words the moment she said them and could only hope that it was dark enough he wouldn’t see she was blushing.

  A waiter passed by the table. Ingrid raised her hand.

  “You’d like another?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Sir?” he asked Angelis.

  “It would be rude not to accompany the lady on her alcoholic voyage. I thought burning the card was a nice touch. Very le Carré.”

  “As was your text. All you gave me was the name of the venue. No time, no purpose.”

  “With you, the purpose is always pleasure.” He sat a little more upright. “I’m sorry, even for me that was a little…” He struggled to find the right word.

  “Sleazy?”

  “Can we settle on louche?”

  She nodded. “Did you just want to see if I’d come running? Is that it?”

  “Heavens, no! I actually have something for you.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

  “Please, I trust that—our recent history not withstanding—you know I am more of a gentleman than to suggest… though of course if you were to suggest the exact same thing…”

  “Stop it, Nick.” She wasn’t going to say it, but she was definitely thinking it. Two consenting adults. No strings. “So what have you got? And why give it to me here?”

  The waiter discreetly placed their drinks in front of them and retreated.

  “The location is simple enough to explain. After the unfortunate incident earlier this year, Fortnum’s now provides security to the Beaufort and, seeing as it is less than five hundred yards from your office, it is practically your local.”

  “So how many cameras are watching us right now?”

  He leaned in. “Precisely? None.”

  Her surprise quickly waned. It made sense.

  “This is one of the few places in London where we guarantee no electronic surveillance. We sweep every four hours for listening devices, and in case someone does attempt to record any activity, there are white-noise screens around the booths and the lighting is at such a frequency that it makes filming problematic. Your average camera phone, or camera pen, doesn’t stand a chance. Mobile phone signals are blocked.”

  The Beaufort was a place where meetings—and murders—could take place in secret. “You would have thought, wouldn’t you, that a venue where a prominent man dies in suspicious circumstances would be keen to install the latest surveillance equipment.”

  He leaned in further, close enough for her to feel his breath on her cheek. “And they have. Sitting over there under the chandelier is Marianne. Igor and Miguel are behind the bar. I believe you passed Channing on the door.”

  Ingrid scrutinized the personnel as Nick pointed them out.

  “I don’t suppose you even noticed the operatives we have outside, but as soon as you turned into Waverton Street your arrival here was anticipated.”

  “Hence the vodka.”

  “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “You know it’s a good choice. So the staff here are all Fortnum’s?”

  “Almost all. Listening, observing, memorizing. We’re like the priestesses at Delphi. We know everything.”

  Very smart. Plenty of private security firms could offer muscle, weaponry and hacked intel from rogue satellites, but few could offer their clients wisdom accrued in the darkest of corners of a venue designed to lure in the world’s greatest plotters and schemers.

  “Just think, agent, what you could do with that information if you joined us.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I think I’m a little overqualified to be a waitress in a club.”

  “You know how we work. You’ve been on an operation with me. We’d find something commensurate with your acumen and combat skills.” He leaned back to better gauge her reaction.

  All Ingrid could think about was the time she had witnessed Nick hold a witness’s face underwater until he coughed up the information they needed. Whatever expression that memory produced gave Nick his answer.

  “Ah, not yet then,” he said. “But one day I hope to persuade you.”

  She liked accountability. She liked answering to a power she believed in. She liked being the law. Clear lines and boundaries suited her.

  “We’d have a lot of fun.”

  “Maybe you can let me moonlight the next time you have an assignment in Paris or Rome.”

  “Ah, if only. I don’t think your employer would approve. Plausible deniability and all that.” He maintained eye contact while draining his glass. “With us there’s no equivocation. We’re like the bloody musketeers. All in. Always.” Even he winced at his innuendo.

  And yet, rather than being repelled, it occurred to Ingrid that she was—unexpectedly—more comfortable with Nick than she had been with Ralph. Ralph was a good, kind, considerate man, the kind you marry if you want a quiet life. But Ingrid didn’t want to get married: she hadn’t ended things with Marshall to p
ut another man’s ring on her finger.

  The combination of ice, fire and lime was waking her up and she’d had just enough vodka to not be embarrassed to stare at Nick. The man was too damn suave for his own good but right now he offered more of what she wanted, more of what she needed. With Nick, things were transactional, a favor for a favor. She looked up from the open neck of Nick’s shirt, lingered on his Adam’s apple and then into his eyes. They both knew what the other was thinking.

  “So,” she said.

  “So.”

  “You said you had some information for me.”

  “I did?” She had flustered him. She liked that she could do that to him. “Yes I did, didn’t I.” He picked up his glass. “It’s about your boss. Louden.”

  A well-dressed man in his twenties, a younger version of Nick, approached the table. “Excuse me.”

  “What is it, Channing?”

  “Miss Skyberg’s car is here.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Will you tell him to wait.”

  “Of course.”

  She turned her attention to Nick who looked somewhere between surprised and disappointed. “You booked a car?”

  “It’s work.” She finished her vodka in one long burning gulp. She put the glass back down on the table and looked at Nick. “So, do you want to tell me about Louden in the car?”

  “Or over breakfast?”

  There was no way she was letting him stay the night.

  35

  The gun felt surprisingly light. It had been so long since Ingrid had got her Glock 23 out of the gun safe at the embassy that she had expected it to feel as heavy as it had the first time her father had put his in her ten-year-old hands. He had needed to leave the farm to renegotiate loans with the bank in Minneapolis and Svetlana had been sick for the first—and only—time Ingrid could remember. Her father, like all farmers, owned several guns but the Glock 23 was the one he kept by his bedside, the one he trusted in the middle of the night. It was the one he wanted her to reach for if anyone broke into the house.

  Even at the time Ingrid had thought it was unnecessary: if the feed guy who’d been delivering to the farm for twenty years still had trouble finding the place because it was so remote, there wasn’t much chance of an escaped felon breaking in and threatening their welfare. But Hal Skyberg wasn’t taking chances. A tall, broad-shouldered man with rosy cheeks and blond hair that never dimmed with age, he had taken her out into the yard and told her to point the gun at a plastic pail twenty yards away. He stood behind her, his huge hands covering hers, as she lined up the sight with the target.

  “Check again,” he said. “You gotta look real good.”

  So she did. She adjusted her aim.

  “Now straighten your arms. You gotta brace ’em. Lock your elbows.”

  She followed her gentle father’s instructions.

  “Now round out your shoulders. That’s the thing that makes the difference. You gotta hunch your shoulders like your grandmama—that way, you can keep ’em still.”

  By this point, the ten-year-old Ingrid was finding the gun heavy, her aim was dropping.

  “You want your legs hip-width apart. That’s your stance. That’s good Ingrid. Now look again. And when you’re ready, you pull on that trigger.”

  The same gun now seemed so small in her hand, but as she looked down at it lying across her palm, she could still picture that first lesson in the yard and she could feel her father; a physical memory of his proximity.

  When she had fired her first bullet, the Glock had bounced right out of her hand and landed in the dirt. The pail was good for fetching water and feed for another decade. But by the time she’d trained with the Jackson County sheriff’s office, Deputy Ingrid Skyberg was acing every single practice session.

  “Ready?” the instructor asked.

  Ingrid nodded and pulled the defenders over her ears. Legs a hip-width apart, shoulders rounded, elbows locked, she braced herself and pulled the trigger, aiming at the center of the target at the other end of the firing range.

  The gun still bounced in her hands after every round, but her grip remained secure. Before each shot, she looked again, refocused and pulled the trigger. Aim fast, shoot slow, that was her father’s motto. She completed the ‘Cop’s Dozen’—there were thirteen bullets in the standard-issue magazines—and a second target was lowered from the ceiling twenty yards further away. She changed clips and took aim.

  “Ready?” the instructor shouted.

  She nodded. Another thirteen bullets, all of them hitting the target. She replaced the clip, ready for the next test.

  “OK, miss, that’s it,” he said.

  “Really? No moving targets?”

  “No.” He looked up at her from his clipboard. “Not today. This was just a preliminary assessment so we can book you in for the course.”

  “And how did I do?”

  “All the Americans we get in here can hit a target—it’s the engagement protocols you sometimes struggle with.”

  She holstered the Glock and checked to see if her new jacket would do up over the weapon. “What? We’re all ‘shoot first, ask later’ and you guys wait until you’ve had your knee blown off before you open fire?”

  “Something like that.” He smiled at her for the first time since she’d got there at 8am. “We’ve had the odd spray and pray.”

  “I hope any feds you get in here are a little more cautious. We have to account for every bullet.”

  “Same as us, then.” He was a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Firearms Command. He had the calm confidence of a man who could do anything from shearing a sheep, to scaling a vertical cliff face to mixing the perfect martini. The kind of guy you wanted on your team when things got tough.

  Ingrid flexed her fingers. In every field office on almost every desk in the FBI you’d find some kind of dense foam toy, or a hand grip, so that agents could keep their trigger finger supple.

  “So when can I start the course?”

  He looked up from his paperwork. “We run them a couple of times a year, out at our facility in Gravesend.”

  “A couple times a year? How long will I have to wait?”

  “I think you might be in luck. If there’s space, you might be able to do it next month. Check with the guy on the desk on your way out, but you’ll need a certificate from me first.”

  “And how do I get that?”

  He gave her a smile. “You go and sit in reception, and once I’ve found someone to countersign it, I’ll bring it out to you.”

  Ingrid looked at the torn and stained couches in the tatty reception area and wondered if she should risk sitting down. It wasn’t that she was worried about fleas, more about falling asleep, even with the sound of muffled gunfire coming through the sound-proofed walls. After she had kicked Nick out of her apartment around 2am, she’d had difficulty getting to sleep. She’d lain in bed, going over everything she’d learnt from Olek, the Jupiter Cars chauffeur who had driven them to her place in Maida Vale.

  Olek had remembered picking Kristyn up from Wapping very clearly: being eight months pregnant meant she had stuck in his mind. “She was not crying,” he kept on repeating when Ingrid had asked if she seemed distressed. His English wasn’t great, but he was able to tell her something that she thought might prove useful: he had dropped her off at the Buckingham Palace Road entrance to Victoria station.

  “Most people just want the main station,” he’d said, “but she asked for it specially. Buck-ing-ham. I remember that.” It was how all American tourists pronounced it. It was how Ingrid would have said it once; after all, it is how it’s written.

  Restless, Ingrid had left her apartment as soon as the sun had come up. She packed her new outfit—it was fast becoming her uniform—into a backpack and ran into Grosvenor Square. By 6:30am she was showered and at her desk, updating the documents Don and Jennifer had prepared the night before. No reports of pregnant bag-snatchers in the metropolitan area, no unaccompanied
teenagers in the maternity units, no sightings of Avery Donaho.

  Ingrid yawned. What harm could it do if she sat down for a few minutes? Didn’t Confucius say that a smart woman rests when she can, a foolish one when she has to? She went over to one of the couches and took a seat on a thin foam cushion. On a scratched plastic table in front of her was an unappetizing selection of newspapers: the Daily Mail and the Sun. Ingrid chose the Mail on the basis that it was thicker and might actually contain some news. While there was some reporting on the situation in Syria, the first few pages were focused on celebrities she did not recognize, miracle diets and medical breakthroughs. It almost didn’t matter what the date was on the cover: the paper could run the same stories on any day of the week.

  Her phone rang in her pocket. She looked at who was calling and wasn’t particularly surprised to see who it was.

  “Agent Skyberg.”

  “I know who you are. I called you. I presume I don’t have to say my name, too? You must have it programed into your phone. Or are the FBI’s gadgets so good that you don’t just know who I am but where I’m calling from and what I had for breakfast?”

  “Yup, Angela, we have breathalyzers in all our devices and I can tell that you had brandy with your coffee this morning.”

  “You know, you’re not far off. Well, what have you got for me?”

  Ingrid leaned back against the inadequate couch. “In what way?”

  “Well, two days ago you and I made a little agreement, and this morning I find out you haven’t been entirely honest with me.”

  Ingrid flicked through the Daily Mail and considered how to respond.

  “You told me Truman Cooper’s stalker was in London, but I got an email overnight—unhelpful time difference, I would rather not work on a Saturday, at least not this early in the morning—informing me Cooper’s stalker is still incarcerated in the Marin County jail.”