Final Offer

by Eva Hudson

“It might help, you know?” McKittrick said.

  Ingrid implored her with her eyes not to make her. Even the aroma of the coffee was making her feel queasy.

  “We’re good,” McKittrick said to the man before returning her attention to Ingrid. “Okay, so the first thing to tell you is there’s not going to be a criminal investigation. All the evidence says you put something in your oven and passed out. Which is such a classy move, by the way. And as I’m willing to bet you’d never even used your oven before last night, their theory seems extremely plausible to me.”

  Was McKittrick right? Had she really never used her oven? In four years? Possibly not.

  “But the reason there is a cop outside his room is he’s in a bad state—”

  “How bad?”

  “Not regained consciousness. ICU. The thing is, he didn’t have ID on him, so they’re trying to find out who he is. Now—” McKittrick leaned forward a little and placed her palms on the bed “—I’m guessing you have at least some idea how he ended up in your flat.”

  An image of kissing a man in the elevator in her building whipped through Ingrid’s brain.

  “You told the fireman who rescued you you’d never seen him before. You must have been really drunk.”

  Ingrid’s head felt like it was in a contraption exerting so much pressure on her skull it compelled her to look downward.

  “And given your history with men…”

  “Thanks.” Her stomach performed another somersault. “His name is Tim, I think. Tom? No, Tim. Definitely. Architect. Camberwell.” Saying any more was a struggle.

  “Architect, eh? A date with someone who isn’t in law enforcement is a bit of a breakthrough for you.” McKittrick was trying to be flippant, but she was also accurate. “Well done, you. So, this Tim. Anything else I tell the Old Bill?”

  Ingrid struggled. Her brain was eighty percent granite, a useless, dense object with a diminished capacity for reason.

  “Nice eyes,” Ingrid said, knowing how unhelpful that was.

  “I’ll be sure to let them know.” McKittrick drained her coffee and dropped the cup into the plastic trash bag tied to the bed frame.

  Ingrid looked around for something.

  “What are you after?”

  “My phone.”

  “It’s still in your apartment.”

  “Oh, yeah.” She knew that.

  “I thought we could check his Tinder profile.”

  “Tinder? Oh boy, you and I need a proper catch-up. When did that happen? I thought men just dropped at your feet.” McKittrick lowered her voice to protect her friend’s reputation. “What is the renowned supermodel Ingrid Skyberg doing on Tinder?”

  Ingrid grimaced. “Maybe you could download it onto your phone and… no, that wouldn’t work. I don’t know my password.”

  “How do you not know your own password?” McKittrick was enjoying Ingrid’s uselessness.

  “Carolyn set up the profile for me.”

  “Who’s Carolyn? You got a new best friend?”

  “Marshall’s sister.”

  Natasha’s mouth constricted at the mention of Marshall as if she were sucking a small sour fruit. She’d—perfectly reasonably—never liked him.

  “Okay, well, we can find Carolyn, get your password, and hopefully find out more about this Tim fella. But you really don’t recall anything else?”

  Ingrid’s memories were jagged, fragmented, disjointed. She recalled being asked to look at the man they’d carried out of her apartment, but she couldn’t picture the body lying on the floor receiving CPR.

  McKittrick pulled out a bra from the bag. “I’ve never bought underwear for a woman before, so I hope I did okay.” She tipped out a selection of sportswear. “I thought it was safest. Apparently your clothes should be fine, but you’ll need to get everything cleaned. Smoke gets everywhere. Inside drawers. Backs of cupboards.”

  None of that mattered to Ingrid. Apart from a box of childhood mementos, everything in her apartment could be replaced. But the prospect of buying new things and cleaning every surface made her feel faint. “You know what, Tasha, I think the past two days have been the worst of my adult life. First, I saw an old friend who looked like he was dying. Then I probably screwed up at work so badly I’ll have to leave London—”

  “What?”

  “And then I went and made myself homeless through my own bloody stupidity.” She sighed. “Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  Ingrid didn’t know where to start. “It gets worse.”

  “Jesus, Ingrid, what is it? You looked pale when I came in, but now you look positively Arctic.”

  Ingrid held her chin in her hands. “Something’s not adding up.”

  McKittrick waited for her to explain.

  “Assuming Tim and I did what two drunk consenting adults do when they get home drunk, why wasn’t he in the bed with me? Why did they find him in the living room?”

  McKittrick stopped fishing around inside her bag for Ingrid’s house keys. “Good point, well made.”

  “I mean, let’s just say he smelled the smoke and got up to be all heroic, why didn’t he wake me? Why didn’t he put the fire out and come back to bed? Or call the fire department?” Ingrid was starting to feel sick again.

  “We call it a ‘brigade.’”

  “It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  McKittrick shook her head. “It really doesn’t.”

  Ingrid shivered, but not with the cold.

  32

  Ingrid let herself into the lobby of her apartment building and kept her eyes on the floor to reduce the chances of making eye contact with a neighbor. She needed to apologize for putting their lives at risk. She would write letters and leave bottles of wine by their doors, but nothing would ameliorate the shame.

  When the elevator doors opened, the tang of smoke made her catch her breath, and her empty stomach constricted painfully. Her apartment door, immediately opposite the elevators, had a dark halo, and previously invisible cobwebs draped darkly from the ceiling like ghost ride bunting.

  She let herself in using McKittrick’s spare keys, opening the door slowly.

  “Oh, Christ.”

  The short hallway in front of her, once white, was now gray with a tidemark at knee height, below which the original wall color was still determinable. An oily layer of soot neatly crowned the baseboards.

  Not wanting to touch anything, Ingrid left the door open and headed for the small kitchen, the crucible of the damage. The new white sneakers McKittrick had bought her stuck to the floor. Water from the fire hose had left a sticky film over the exposed wooden floorboards. She didn’t want to think about the havoc the water would have caused in the apartment below.

  The oven was warped but remarkably intact. The mug she had used the day before was still next to the sink waiting to be washed, and the crockery on the shelves was still haphazardly stacked, though everything now wore a heavy slick of gray. It was the opposite of snow, a dusting of blacks and darks on every surface, the windows dull and streaked with carbon. There was a hush; it seemed quieter. Maybe soot had sound-insulating properties?

  She heard the elevator doors open behind her and steeled herself: whoever it was would poke their nose in. It would be the man from two doors down. They’d only spoken once before when the garbage hadn’t been collected.

  “Ingrid?”

  It was David Rennie’s voice. She turned. “What are you doing here?”

  “What the hell happened?” He came nervously into the apartment. “Oh my God.” He reached the threshold of the kitchen. “Well, this explains why no one’s been able to get hold of you.”

  Ingrid stared at the worktop, too ashamed to make eye contact.

  “Were you in?” he asked.

  She nodded sheepishly.

  “You okay?”

  She shrugged. “I feel like shit.”

  “You’re shivering.” He took a step toward her, as if he was going to hug her, but stopped himself. “Her
e,” he said, unzipping his jacket. “Take this.”

  “No, you’re all right.”

  “I insist.” He placed his coat on her shoulders and its weight and warmth softened her. His kindness melted something in her, and she closed her eyes to hold back the tears.

  “Thank you,” she managed.

  She heard the buzz of her phone coming from the bedroom. “That’ll be Jennifer,” he said. “We’ve been calling all morning.”

  Ingrid stepped past him and down the hallway to her bedroom. It looked like it usually did: unmade bed, clothes strewn across the floor, cash, cards and phone scattered on the dresser. The smoke damage was much lighter, but there were still dark spiders of soot-soaked cobwebs clinging to the walls and ceiling. Housework had never been her strong point. The phone went to voicemail.

  Rennie came up behind her. “What happened?”

  What could she say? The whole truth was too shameful. “Seems I tried to heat up a takeout and fell asleep.” She scrunched up her face. She didn’t mention her Tinder surprise. “And, yes, alcohol was involved. A neighbor saw the smoke and called the emergency services.” She ran the back of her finger under her lower lashes. “I’m lucky to be alive.”

  He outstretched an arm and put it round her shoulders; she turned into him and let him hold her, surprising them both. “It’s just stuff,” he whispered. “And the insurance will replace it anyway. You are insured, aren’t you?”

  “The Bureau rents it, so yes. I should tell them; they can let the landlord know.”

  Ingrid, uncomfortable with their intimacy, pulled away and walked round the bed in search of her phone.

  “That’s how I found you,” he said. “I put a trace on your cell, and it hadn’t moved for hours, so I came to get you.”

  She wiped an oily film off the screen and saw she had seventeen percent battery left. Fifteen missed calls. “Why?”

  He hugged himself, rubbing his arms. The heating had been turned off, either by the fire or the fire department. “Your phone, your other phone, has rung a few times this morning.”

  “Oh?”

  “And obviously none of us can answer it, but I saw the number come up, and I traced it.” He sounded excited.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, and I’ve worked out who it is.”

  She looked around for her charger and plugged in her phone. It didn’t bleep. “Who?”

  “The call came from a firm in New York, a fintech company. The CEO is a Long Island Princeton type.”

  Ingrid tried unplugging and replugging the phone. It still didn’t beep.

  “His name is Leo Xavier Marx. Heard of him?”

  She looked up from her phone. The electricity must have been turned off too. “Yes, I have, but I can’t tell you where from. Brain’s a little overcooked.” And underfed. Her stomach growled.

  “He’s one of those pretty boys who’ll run for Congress one day and resign when a sexual scandal brings him down. But the reason I came to find you is that you, well, Natalya, needs to call him back.” He was still rubbing his arms to keep himself warm.

  “Who is he?”

  “One of Igor Rybkin’s closest associates. They have a string of investments together.”

  He waited for her to respond.

  “So that’s his brother and his best mate getting in touch. Rybkin must really want the Picasso.” He sounded so excited. “Our batshit crazy plan is working.”

  Ingrid smiled at him. “You’d better hand me the phone.”

  “I didn’t bring it here,” he said. “I couldn’t be sure the call rerouting would prevent it being tracked. It should do, but just in case, because if someone’s figured out who you are… I wasn’t going to bring the phone to your home address. Not that it looks like it’ll be your home for a while.”

  His throwaway comment made her gasp. She would need to find somewhere else to sleep. How careless, she thought, to have abandoned two apartments in two days. Even by Skyberg standards that was next-level incompetence.

  “Is it still at the embassy? Natalya’s phone?”

  “Still on your desk.”

  “I suppose I’d better find some clothes.”

  She opened her wardrobe, wafting a cloud of soot into her face. Everything was unwearable. It would all need cleaning. It all stank of smoke. “I can’t do this,” she said, “not today.”

  Rennie stiffened. “You don’t have to,” he said, taking charge. “What do you need right now?”

  “Um.” She tried to think. Her embassy security pass. Her wallet.

  “There are a lot of downsides to our job, but one of the upsides is the Bureau will take care of this. They’ll find you temporary accommodation; they’ll make the insurance claims.” He came to stand beside her and closed her wardrobe door. “They’ll get your clothes cleaned too.”

  He was right. And he was being kind. She let her muscles slacken. Her shoulders dropped.

  “Thank you,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t see how moist her eyes were.

  “Come on, what do you need?”

  “A shower. But I think they turned my boiler off.”

  “They have showers at the embassy, surely?”

  They did. She nodded.

  “I’m going to need some clothes. A friend brought me these to the hospital—”

  “Hospital?”

  “I’ll explain later.” She scanned the room. “I need my phone, and I need to charge my phone.”

  “Passport? Documentation?”

  She thought for a second. “All that stuff’s at work. It’s just money, my embassy pass and my phone.”

  Ingrid kneeled down and checked under the bed for the shoebox of mementos her mother had sent her. She pulled it toward her.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  She puffed out her cheeks then blew hard. It was impossible to explain. “Trinkets, memories.”

  “You old softy,” he said.

  “It’s not like that,” she said, clambering to her feet. There was no way she could explain the importance of the things inside the box, how they represented the end of one thing and the start of everything else. “I had a friend who died. Murdered, actually.” This time the tears breached her eyes and ran over her cheeks.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  They stood in silence as Ingrid surveyed her gray, sorry home. She smiled a little. In the space of twenty-four hours she’d had three good-looking men in her bedroom: Tim, the firefighter and now Rennie. Something of a record.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’ve got your wallet, your phone”—he pointed to the shoebox—“you’ve got what matters. We’ll go to Oxford Street, buy you enough clothes for a few days; then we’ll get you a room in my hotel. And then Natalya is going to return that call and we will lay a trap for Igor Rybkin.” He held out a hand for her. “Trust me, today might have got off to a terrible start, but I promise you it’s going to end brilliantly.”

  He blushed the moment he said the words.

  “I didn’t mean… When I said my hotel, I mean obviously there are other hotels, it’s just that…”

  His awkwardness was adorable. “You know what I really need?”

  “Name it.”

  “Something to eat.”

  He nodded. “Okay, we’ll get you some food, then the clothes. And then you’re going to call the unnervingly handsome Leo X Marx.”

  “Do you think that’s why his parents gave him the middle name Xavier? So he could be X-marks-the-spot?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “You got everything you need?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Come on.”

  Ingrid locked up and they called the elevator.

  “Marx wasn’t the only call Natalya had this morning,” Rennie said. “She had another international call.”

  “You trace that too?”

  “Der Bundespolizei.”

  33

  “Feeling better?” Rennie asked as Ingrid came out of the
shower room. He was sitting on the bed in his hotel room, his fingers poised over his laptop and the remnants of Ingrid’s room service brunch on a tray beside him.

  Ingrid towel-dried her hair but could still smell the smoke.

  “Yes, thank you. I didn’t want to go into the embassy looking like a soccer mom having a nervous breakdown. After yesterday, I didn’t want my reputation to sink any lower.”

  “It could have happened to any one of us.”

  He sounded like he meant it, but she was still the one who had screwed up, who had made a mistake that had allowed Nick to find her, and who had put the Rybkin investigation in jeopardy.

  They’d gotten a taxi from Ingrid’s apartment in Maida Vale to Selfridge’s on Oxford Street. She’d spent several hundred pounds replacing key elements of her wardrobe on the assumption an insurance payout would reimburse her.

  “They look great,” Rennie said. “And you said you didn’t know how to shop.”

  “I don’t. I pretty much already own everything I’m currently wearing.” She looked down at the black jeans, black calf-length boots, and dark gray sweater. She didn’t do accessories. Or color. “Is there a hairdryer in this place?”

  “Left-hand drawer. Well, you’re still one category above me. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, if I see a shirt I like, I buy it in every color they have. Oh, and reception called while you were in the shower, they say they should have a room for you around five o’clock. Some conference going on, so they’re full until then.”

  “There are other hotels.”

  “True.”

  Ingrid dried her hair, occasionally looking in the mirror at Rennie as he worked. The morning would have gone so differently if he hadn’t come to find her at her apartment. But here she was, two hours later, fed, washed and clothed and with a bed for the night already organized. She scrunched her hair, trying to get some lift into the roots, and found herself thinking again about whether she should have swiped right.

  She put down the hairdryer. “Ready to go?”

  He closed his laptop. “Sure.”

  “I’m sorry we’ve lost the morning. I’m going to try to get the most out of the afternoon. Is my phone charged yet?”