Final Offer

by Eva Hudson

  “Counterterrorism command,” he explained. “Just lending a hand.”

  Cath’s expression suggested otherwise.

  Ingrid shook the technician’s hand before taking a seat. DI Faulkner was on one of the screens, interviewing Oleg Tarlev, who was mid-forties, a bit overweight, with obviously dyed, thinning hair combed over a glistening scalp. A male solicitor sat on one side of him making notes, while a female translator took the other flank. A male officer sitting beside Faulkner probed Tarlev’s memory with thuddingly dull questions. After each one, the suspect turned to the translator and either nodded or shrugged. Faulkner’s face was a picture of contained fury.

  “He let much slip so far?” Ingrid asked.

  “We haven’t really got to the main event yet,” Argawal said. “Just tiring him out. Like a fish on a line.”

  “You connected him to Rybkin?”

  He shook his head.

  “Though, obviously, we’re keeping an open mind. We can’t assume Kashlikov’s death is connected to Rybkina’s,” Cath said.

  “Obviously,” Ingrid said. But equally obviously, they were. Even if they weren’t saying it. Why else was SO15 sending in the grim reaper? Ingrid eyed the tall and sallow Beckford. He was the lead singer to Argawal’s scruffy musician, with collar-length dark hair, angular features and a lean body that verged on scrawny. He twitched and touched his nose regularly, suggesting cocaine had featured in his recent past.

  Ingrid put her jacket on the back of a chair before placing her helmet underneath it. She pulled out a notebook from her backpack, then reached for her phone. The buzzing hadn’t been a Tinder notification from a motorcycle-riding architect: it was a message from Carolyn.

  I need help

  Ingrid wasn’t going to answer immediately. Let the kid sweat, she thought. She reached into the other pocket for Natalya’s phone. There was a missed call from the Gauguin buyer, but she couldn’t return it in her present attire or location. She’d let him sweat too.

  Ingrid tuned into the interview on screen.

  “You need to help me out here,” the other officer conducting the interview said. “You arrive in London on the twenty-fifth of October, and four days later you push a man out of his office window to his death, yet you say you’d never met him before you killed him?”

  Ingrid turned to Cath. “He’s admitted it?” The surprise made her voice squeak a little.

  “Oh, yeah. Forgot to mention that bit.” She pulled an apologetic face.

  “Just trying to link him to his victim,” Argawal said. “It’s looking like a contract killing to me.”

  You don’t say.

  “He turned up on the day of the murder, saying he was from Kensington Properties—who are the managing agents for the building—and needed to investigate a leak.”

  Cath took up the story. “Said he had instructions to access every room and was only in Kashlikov’s office for a minute. The heavy rain meant no one heard anything, but it did mean—”

  “—lots of people were staring out their windows on the other side of the street,” Argawal added.

  “We’ve got plenty of witnesses,” Cath said, “and a confession, but—”

  “But you want the organ grinder not the monkey,” Ingrid said.

  Cath and Argawal both looked at Beckford then nodded. The room fell silent except for the sound of rustling paperwork coming through the speakers.

  “You asked if he knows anything about poisonous spiders?” Ingrid asked half-heartedly.

  “He wasn’t in the country when Yelena Rybkina died,” Cath answered earnestly before she realized Ingrid wasn’t seriously suggesting Tarlev had committed both crimes. Whoever had commissioned the murders—and Igor Rybkin now had to be the prime suspect—would have hired different killers from different gangs to prevent investigators proving a link.

  Ingrid’s phone buzzed again. And again. It was a call, not a text. She checked the screen: Carolyn. She let it go to voicemail.

  Everyone in the room knew the problem with hired killers from impoverished countries like Moldova is that they happily take a life sentence to maintain their entitlement to whatever payment they had received. Protection from a rival gang, a piece of land, the canceling of a debt: whatever it was, the man on the TV screen would take his chances in a British prison, where the worst that would happen to him would be poor nutrition and daytime soap operas.

  Her phoned buzzed again. A text message.

  Please call me.

  It was quickly followed by another.

  Now.

  “What is it?” Cath asked.

  Ingrid buried her fingers into her hair. “Probably nothing, but I need to deal with this. Shall I?” She nodded in the direction of the corridor.

  “Sure,” Cath said.

  Ingrid closed the door gently behind her and dialed Carolyn’s number.

  “What is it?”

  “Ingrid, is that you?” Carolyn sounded drunk.

  “What’s happened?”

  “I’ve screwed up.” No, she was high, her words veering like a car on ice.

  The blood pulsed in Ingrid’s ears. Her throat tightened. What the hell had happened?

  “I don’t know where I am.”

  “Who’s with you, Carolyn? Who’s there?”

  “I couldn’t call Marshall. He’ll kill me.”

  “Who’s with you, Carolyn?”

  No answer. In the background Ingrid could hear heavy traffic and shouting.

  “Can you come and get me?”

  “Can’t you get the subway? Or a bus?”

  Carolyn started to cry. “I don’t know where I am.”

  “Ask someone!” She was exasperating. “Can you see a Tube station? Or a bus stop?”

  “I don’t have my purse. I don’t have any money. It got stolen.”

  Tremors of fear shook Carolyn’s voice. Ingrid wanted to tell her to pull herself together, but also knew what happened to teenage girls who don’t get help when they ask for it.

  “Can you see a pub? A café?”

  Carolyn sniffed. “Yes.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “The Warwick Arms.”

  “And what street are you on?”

  “Um… I don’t know—” The shouting got louder. It sounded like men hassling her.

  “Carolyn, head to the pub. Just go to the pub. I’m going to send a taxi for you.”

  Ingrid took a deep breath and opened the interview suite door. “Cath? Can you put a trace on a number for me?”

  Cath’s eyes bulged with curiosity. “Yeah, sure.” She stood up. “Um, come this way.”

  “Stay on the line, Carolyn. You hear me?”

  Cath’s colleagues traced Carolyn’s phone to somewhere called Gipsy Hill, and Ingrid opened the Ryde app and dispatched a taxi to the Warwick Arms to collect her. Fifty minutes later, Ingrid was looking out her apartment window in Maida Vale, waiting for Carolyn’s taxi to arrive. There was no way she could have sent the girl to Marshall’s address.

  Ingrid got out her phone and opened Tinder. She needed to tell Tim she wasn’t going to be joining him for a ‘thing’ after all.

  22

  Ingrid sat on Vitali Shevchenko’s brocaded couch in his palatial drawing room and yawned.

  “Late night?”

  “You could say that.” She pinched her thumb and forefinger together, reminding her to stay in character.

  “Anything nice?”

  The man asking the questions was Barney Alexander, a part-time curator, junior valuer and total genius at framing and hanging paintings. He had crossed Natalya’s path at an event at Hauser and Wirth, and she had snapped him up. The problem with Barney, however, was that Ingrid liked him, which made it hard not to lapse out of character. It didn’t help that he didn’t speak a word of Russian, and whenever she spoke English, slipups always felt more likely.

  “I did not sleep well,” Ingrid said, maintaining Natalya’s accent. She’d spent a second night on the
couch because she hadn’t been able to persuade Carolyn to leave. She’d been in such a state when she arrived, she’d put her to bed in her own room.

  Once she’d passed out, she called Marshall.

  “You’re welcome to her.”

  “Marshall, don’t be a total ass. She’s your sister.”

  “Not today she isn’t.”

  “What’s she done?”

  Carolyn’s litany of crimes was extensive but not serious. She’d missed class. She’d brought friends home. He’d smelled cannabis on her clothes. She hadn’t called their mom at the appointed hour. She had reminded him of the time the whole family played a trick on him by pretending they’d passed out, and he’d dialed 911 and the entire neighborhood turned up on the doorstep. Basically, Carolyn had wound him up. Which wasn’t hard to do. After yet another row, she’d stormed out and somehow ended up stoned in Gipsy Hill.

  “She needs support, Marshall. She’s intoxicated; she’s been mugged; she’s scared.” She paused for him to reply, but none came. “She’s only been in the country a couple of weeks. Can’t you go easy on her?”

  He sniffed loudly.

  “Marshall, she can stay here tonight, but I’m sending her to you in the morning.”

  However, Carolyn had refused to go. She would find a roommate. Anywhere but Marshall’s, she’d said. Ingrid had given her a hundred pounds and twenty-four hours to get herself sorted, but when she’d come home from work the night before, the girl had taken up residence in her room. She claimed she’d been too ill to make any plans—the hangover from hell—but she promised, faithfully, to get her act together tomorrow. When Ingrid left for work, Carolyn hadn’t gotten out of bed. She was worried she would never get rid of her.

  “Natalya Vesnina!” Vitali Shevchenko strode toward Ingrid with his hand outstretched.

  Ingrid stood up. “Vitali Shevchenko! I am so pleased you could join us. Your housekeeper said you might be detained. But this is too important to miss, is it not?”

  “It is indeed.” He turned to the security guard, who had been leaning against the door frame. “You can go now.”

  The guard, dressed head-to-toe in black fatigues as if on special ops, ducked out into the hallway, and Shevchenko turned his attention back to Natalya. “And who is this?” he asked.

  “Allow me to introduce you. This is Barney Alexander. I have worked a lot with him and he has an amazing eye. The best hanger of pictures in London, in my opinion, possibly even Europe, but alas, he does not speak Russian.”

  “Then, hello,” Shevchenko said in English. The men shook hands.

  “It is an absolute honor, sir,” Barney said. “You have the most incredible collection.”

  “Thank you. So,” Shevchenko said, returning to his native tongue, “have you decided where they should go?”

  In the two days since Ingrid had taken delivery of the Maleviches, she had arranged for them to be framed in deep oak moldings. “I thought you should like to see them in their frames before we decide where to hang them.”

  “Undoubtedly.”

  The paintings were leaning up against the wall, encased in several layers of bubble wrap. She fished out a small pocketknife from her purse—eliciting a look of surprise from their host—and asked Barney to show Shevchenko his purchases.

  “While we were waiting for you, we have decided that there is a perfect place, or rather two perfect places, for your new acquisitions, but first we want to know where you think they should hang.”

  For Ingrid’s plan for the Picasso heist to work, she had to guide Shevchenko through a specific train of thought so he would inevitably reach the conclusion of her choosing. All that mattered was that by the time Natalya Vesnina left Bolton Square, Les Prêteurs d’Argent was hanging on the fourth floor.

  “Obviously I want them to hang in this room,” Shevchenko said, “but beyond that, I have not given it much consideration.”

  “You see,” Ingrid said as Barney removed the second Malevich from its plastic shroud, “it seems to me this house has become, if you will forgive me, the real Russian embassy in London.” She reached out a hand, palm facing outwards. “Barney, no,” she said in English. “Not that one.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  There was a third painting behind the Maleviches, but that was not for Shevchenko’s eyes. At least not yet.

  Barney stood up and admired the works. “It is such an honor to look at them. It must be a thrill to own them.”

  Shevchenko did not respond. He folded his arms and stared at their geometric shapes: bold intersecting triangles and a scattering of black rectangles. They had been painted as a pair, with one the inverse of the other. They were large for the artist, approximately four feet square. Individually they were intriguing, but together they had real impact.

  “As I was saying, this house is now known as the true Russian embassy.” She paused to check that her flattery was working. A faint smile stretched Shevchenko’s lips. “Since the Litvinenko enquiry, this has been the place where Russians who matter come to do business. So I have been thinking this room should reflect that.”

  Shevchenko wrenched his gaze away from his new toys. “Yes?”

  Ingrid had worked out her sales pitch. The drawing room should only have Russian artists, and the two Maleviches should face each other, operating as demarcation points between contemporary and older works. One end of the drawing room would feature pre-1917 works, the other end would show his collection from after the revolutions, keeping his beloved neon sign in its current home above one of the fireplaces. Ingrid showed him a sketch she had prepared earlier.

  “Would Ivana Shevchenko care to join us?” Ingrid asked. Involving his wife seemed a sensible insurance policy.

  “She is in New York,” he said.

  “We could phone her,” Ingrid suggested. “FaceTime?”

  “There is no need.” Shevchenko pushed one hand deep into his pants pocket and examined the plan Ingrid had given him.

  A crashing sound erupted out in the entrance hall, echoing off the cool marble surfaces. Shevchenko thudded out through the paneled doors onto the galleried walkway that overlooked the entrance hall.

  “What’s your name?” he shouted over the balustrade.

  Ingrid ran to stand beside him. A plant had been knocked off its plinth and the black and white tiled floor below them was strewn with soil and broken pieces of ceramic.

  “What is your name?” he demanded, his face turning red.

  A uniformed maid looked up at him, shaking. “I… I do not speak Russian,” she said timidly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  Shevchenko repeated his demand in English.

  Her name was Hilda. She was from Brazil. And she was in no doubt she was about to be fired. “I am sorry,” she repeated. “So sorry.”

  Two of the security team ran into the entrance hall, semiautomatic pistols outstretched. Berettas.

  “Do you know how much that vase is worth?” Shevchenko was so angry he spluttered as he spoke.

  The maid shook her head, her eyes darting toward the men taking aim at her.

  “More than your life.”

  Ingrid gasped. For a split second she thought she was about to witness an execution. How easy it would be, she realized, for a house like this to get away with the punishment killing of a woman like Hilda. An undocumented immigrant versus a man with limitless means.

  “I will clean it,” the maid said, her voice wavering.

  Shevchenko, gripping the banister so hard his knuckles turned white, started to rock slightly. Ingrid instinctively took a step back. His lips snarled. He looked like he was going to spit on her.

  “Good,” he finally said. “Now!”

  He smacked the balustrade, making Ingrid flinch, turned on his heels and stormed back into the drawing room. Ingrid watched the maid crouch down to clean the debris with her bare hands, like a penitent, while the security men kept their watch. Behind her, she heard Shevchenko bark instructions through the in
tercom to his housekeeper. Hilda would be looking for another job by lunchtime.

  Ingrid re-entered the drawing room and made eye contact with Barney. He cast his gaze downward, trying to make himself invisible, harmless.

  “That must be so distressing for you,” she said to Shevchenko in what she hoped was a sympathetic tone. She hated placating a monster. “When you have such glorious possessions, it is so disheartening others do not treat them with respect.”

  Shevchenko’s nostrils flared. He did not want to be spoken to. He turned his head away, a gesture of disgust. How different this beast was from the ‘friendly oligarch’ she had met at so many events. She wanted to tell him the deal was off, that she would not have such a bully as a client, but she couldn’t. The FBI needed him to calm down and to accede to her plan. Jones had insisted the break-in would happen in three days’ time, and that meant she had to move the Picasso today. She told herself that mattered more than Hilda, but she didn’t believe herself.

  Ingrid left Shevchenko and crouched down next to Barney so they could talk quietly. In hushed tones, they discussed how the room would be rehung. Behind them, Shevchenko strode across to one of the arched windows overlooking his landscaped garden, his heavy breathing audible from twenty feet away.

  Nervously, surreptitiously, Ingrid and her hangman got to their feet and started the business of holding the new paintings in their intended positions, making gentle murmurings of appreciation. Minute by minute, the tension in the room deflated, one bar of pressure at a time.

  Ingrid’s jaw relaxed. Her breathing deepened.

  “Natalya Vesnina,” Shevchenko said, still looking out the window, “this will have to wait. I cannot do this today.”

  Govno.

  Plan B.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, desperate to buy time. “This is something you want to consider properly. Rehanging your collection should be a pleasure, not a chore.”

  “I have calls to make,” he said. His tone was sullen, dark.

  “Of course, Vitali Shevchenko. If you like,” Ingrid said, thinking on her feet, “I could find you a replacement for the vase that has been broken.”