by Eva Hudson
“Oh, Nick. That’s a lot to go through on your own. I can’t believe anyone would leave a marriage while their partner is going through treatment.”
He couldn’t make eye contact. “I wasn’t easy to be with.”
She could imagine that. Nick was ex-Special Forces. His body had been a machine—a beautiful machine, according to her memories—and losing his physicality would have been hard enough for him. Losing his faith in his body would have been even harder.
“Besides,” he said. “I rather broke our contract. She was always very clear that she wanted children. And, well, the treatment has rather put paid to that.”
Ingrid exhaled, her heart swollen with sympathy for him. “I’m so sorry. I somehow had a mental picture of a future you in a house in Greece with a litter of half-feral children being allowed to camp on beaches and take boats out without adult supervision.”
He raised an eyebrow. “A litter?”
She pressed her lips together. “Perhaps not my best choice of words.”
“Half-feral?” They were silent for a few moments. “That does sound rather marvelous,” he said, before tipping his head to drain his glass. They both knew he was blinking back a tear.
The waiter returned. “Are you ready to order?”
Nick didn’t even look at the menu. “The poussin, for me.”
“And the swordfish for me,” Ingrid added. “Listen,” she said when the waiter had left, “I need to say something.”
He topped up their glasses. “Okay.” He sounded nervous.
Ingrid’s body was dipped in the heat of shame. She proceeded cautiously, to disguise her discomfort at such an intimate declaration. “I need to say I’m sorry.” She clamped her lips together.
“You do?”
She nodded. “I knew you were ill, but I didn’t say anything. That was lousy. I’m sorry.” She paused. This would be so much easier if he just had spinach in his teeth. “And I’m ashamed it took me needing something from you to get in touch.”
The loquacious Nick Angelis was momentarily silenced. “That is appreciated.” His voice was distant. “I’ll tell you one thing about cancer, you bloody well find out who your friends are.”
Svetlana had once said something similar. Years after Ingrid’s father had died, she mentioned the silence that followed them in the street when he was ill and how, on their fifteenth anniversary—their last—they could only summon a table’s worth of dinner party guests from the hundreds who had attended their wedding.
“Another thing about cancer is people do rather tend to think you’re useless, so, actually, it was nice that you still think I can help.”
She had sent him a request the day before to see if his contacts knew anything about Mulroony’s whereabouts. “And can you?” Ingrid asked, her voice dipping to a whisper. “Have you been able to find anything out?”
Nick leaned backward to allow the waiter to place an eggcup sized bowl in front of them both. “From the kitchen,” he said, before discretely retreating.
Ingrid raised the small cup to her nose and inhaled. A pungent truffle aroma exploded in her nostrils, producing an almost simultaneous saliva response in her mouth. She took a sip, and then another. It was like the flavor of an entire meal had been condensed into a single fluid ounce.
“The chef’s a genius,” Nick said. “Listen, before we get to Mulroony, I need to say something too.”
Ingrid was surprised. “Ah, okay.”
“I also have to apologize. About Sweden. I put you in danger—I don’t think I asked you to do anything I didn’t know you weren’t entirely capable of—and at the very least you deserved recognition of that.” He looked up from his lap and held her gaze. “I should have given you an opportunity to have a pop.”
“A pop?”
“Okay, more than a pop. I should have offered you my body as a punching bag, but as you can see, cancer has taken that swipe for you.”
She placed a hand on his, the electricity of their touch sending a carbonated response through her veins. “I hated you Nick, but I never hated you that much.”
He looked sheepishly at their entwined hands. “You had every right to.” He sniffed sharply. “Now, Mr. Mulroony.”
Ingrid pulled back, withdrawing her hand. “I’m all ears.”
“You might want your eyes too.”
“Huh?”
He reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out a folded sheet of photocopier paper. He placed it on the table between them. Ingrid unfolded it. In the dim golden lamplight of the restaurant, it was hard to know what she was looking at. A satellite image of a large building. A military base? She held it a little further away, trying to catch the light from the candle holder.
“That is ‘Correctional Facility Number Six’,” Nick said. “Somewhere near the Kazakh border.”
“The Black Dolphin prison?”
“Then you’ve heard of it.”
“It’s notorious. The Russian Alcatraz.”
“I think Alcatraz might feel like summer camp in comparison,” Nick said, sipping his champagne. “Anyway. That’s why you couldn’t find Mulroony on any of your searches.”
Ingrid felt a pressure on her chest. “He’s in here?” She waved the paper at him.
“I have a source that says he was in 2015.”
“Where is he now?”
Nick shrugged. “Presumably still there.”
A shiver rippled over Ingrid’s skin, despite the warm evening air. She stared into nothingness, trying to make sense of Nick’s revelation. “I don’t understand,” she said. “If he was a Russian asset, why did they put him in jail?”
19
Ingrid considered moving the towel she’d swiped from her hotel into the shade. She had already reapplied sun lotion twice, but the cooler air under the branches of the large chestnut tree had been claimed by two mothers who were keeping their excited children close on account of the ‘missing’ posters stapled to the information board at the entrance to the park. Eight-year-old Mason Stebbings hadn’t been seen for three days. She checked her phone. Still nothing from Sol. She had now asked him three times to get her the name of someone she could talk to about Mulroony. When she got back to the office, she was going to have to say something to DeWalt.
“Please tell me you’re not thinking of buying out here,” Natasha McKittrick said as she approached. She was wearing a wide-brimmed linen hat and her face was nearing beet levels of redness. “The time to buy in the Royal Docks was at least ten years ago.”
“Isn’t that true for all property?” Ingrid rolled over to make space for Natasha, who dumped a wicker hamper onto the parched grass. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a parasol in there, have you?”
Natasha scrunched up her features. “No, but I have chilled water and a sarong you can drape over your shoulders if you like.”
“That’d be great.”
Ingrid kept her eyes on number thirty-six as Natasha spread out a picnic blanket and unpacked the hamper. “Here you go.” She handed Ingrid a bottle of water that was still mostly ice. Ingrid held it against her forehead and let out a gasp. “When are we due for some rain?”
“Forecast says end of the week.”
Ingrid squinted up at the dome of blue sky. The only clouds were airplane contrails.
Natasha rubbed lotion into her uncommonly pale skin. “Remind me what we’re doing out here?”
“A small spot of surveillance,” Ingrid said. She nodded in the direction of the house. “Number thirty-six.”
Natasha peered at it over the top of her ant-black sunglasses. “Something to do with the missing kid? Aren’t the local plod dealing with that?”
“No, nothing about the kid.”
“Then who lives there?” Natasha asked.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“We?” She slid her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “I have to say, Agent Skyberg, this isn’t looking like an official FBI operation. No van wi
th listening equipment, no backup. What’s going on?”
Ingrid smiled at her friend. “It’s one of those I-can-tell-you-but-I’d-have-to-kill-you things.”
“Aye, right,” Natasha said suspiciously. “More like one of those you’ve-been-told-to-drop-it-but-you-can’t things.”
Ingrid demurred. “I couldn’t possibly comment.”
“Well, at least tell me what I’m looking out for. I do have some experience of conducting surveillance operations.” She handed Ingrid the sarong.
Ingrid took a long pull on the icy water. “Oh, you know, anything that screams criminal conspiracy, espionage and international intrigue.” She looked at the sarong. “Think we can make a shade sail out of this?”
Natasha shrugged. “If anyone can, it’s you. Whittle a few sticks? Bind some string out of the grass?”
The only building materials Ingrid could see were chocolate bar wrappers and what looked suspiciously like a used condom. She settled for wrapping it around her shoulders.
“I thought you Scandi types tanned easily,” Natasha said, offering Ingrid a packet of potato chips.
“We do. Well, I do, but this much sun isn’t exactly good for your skin.” She was tempted to say something about not everyone wanting to resort to Botox, but her phone illuminated with an incoming message. She glanced at it briefly. Svetlana. It was 2 p.m. That meant the breakfast news would be on in Minnesota. Her mother would unleash a barrage of texts in the next half hour.
Natasha realized Ingrid’s anxiety. “Go ahead. I’ll keep watch.”
TV is saying verdict next week. What you think?
Jones last day.
Maybe forensics this afternoon.
Svetlana’s messages were pack animals, always arriving as a herd, marauding through Ingrid’s phone and trampling on her psyche.
“It’s the trial,” Ingrid said. “My mom sends about a million updates a day.”
McKittrick reached into the hamper and pulled out a miniature bottle of wine. “I wondered if you might need this?”
Ingrid stared at the bottle. The condensation running over its curved surface made it even more appealing. “Better not.” She nodded at the Ducati. “I’ve got the bike, remember.”
McKittrick twisted off the cap and glugged a third of its contents into her mouth. “What do you think?” she asked. “Are they going to convict him? For Megan’s murder, I mean? I saw he’s claiming he didn’t kill the first three victims. He’s obviously going to the chair for the later murders. Surely?”
Ingrid tore at the wet paper label on her water. She got the impression Natasha was following the case out of loyalty to her, and not because of her professional interest in crime. “There’s no death penalty in Minnesota,” she said quietly.
“Oh. I hadn’t realized that. I thought the whole of the Midwest was dunk ’em and burn ’em territory.” McKittrick paused. “Sorry, poor taste. But, um, do you think he did it? Killed your friend, I mean?”
Ingrid glanced at more messages arriving from Svetlana. “Honestly?” Ingrid was about to say something she’d been thinking for a while but hadn’t dared utter out loud. “I don’t know.”
“Oh.” McKittrick was thrown by Ingrid’s equivocation. “I guess I assumed you’d know one way or another. I mean, you’d know if he was the guy you saw, wouldn’t you?”
Ingrid took a breath before answering. “Would I?” She scrunched up her face. “It was twenty years ago. It was dark. I was terrified. There’s a reason they didn’t ask me to testify.” Ingrid’s shoulders slumped. “I just want it to be over. But, I hope for Megan’s mom that the jury does the decent thing and convicts.” She turned to her friend. “We both know that if they don’t, the police aren’t going to reopen the case.”
“It sounds like you think he didn’t do it?”
Ingrid inhaled so deeply her entire upper body moved. “I honestly don’t know. I stopped trusting my judgement about this a long time ago.” She stared at the house, hoping for movement. “I’ve waited two decades to find out what happened to my best friend.” An image of Megan in math class popped into Ingrid’s thoughts. “I’ve lost count of the therapists who have told me I need closure on this. So…”
“So?”
“So, I hope it’s him.”
McKittrick pulled a sympathetic face. “What did you make of the forensic anthropologist the defense wheeled out? He looked like a character from a Saturday Night Live sketch. Was that even his real hair?”
Natasha was referring to Dr. Peter Mikkelson who had a mixed reputation. He was either a cavalier maverick with a greater regard for his own fame and power than the truth, or he was a bold outlier willing to challenge the consensus. His wild red hair and bowtie suggested the former, but he had been proved right enough times that no one could discount the latter.
Ingrid, untrusting of her own judgement, threw the question back to McKittrick. “What did you make of him?”
Natasha perked up a bit. It seemed she had missed being asked for her opinion about policing. “Well, on the one hand you can’t dispute the facts. The hyoid bone in the first three victims had been broken, but not in the subsequent nine. That could suggest this Billy Starr existed and had a different way of—” Natasha paused and lowered her voice “—strangling his victims. But you and I both know the hyoid isn’t always fully formed in adolescents, and given the age of the victims I don’t think it’s as significant a finding as it would be if the victims were in their thirties or forties.” McKittrick paused and the sounds of children playing bounced through the hot, dry air. “And you’d think that if this Billy Starr really did exist, there’d be more of a trace. I mean, obviously, Starr is his stage name, but surely someone in a small place would remember the guy who used to live there. Someone who bought videos from him must currently be inside and would trade info for a shorter sentence?”
Ingrid sipped her water. “It’s not a small place, it’s no place. There isn’t another building for miles. And if he was making porn and killing girls, he’d deliberately not want to see folks.”
“So you think Jones isn’t making it up?”
Ingrid shrugged, suddenly unable to speak. One of those girls was Megan. One of those girls could have been her.
“I’m sorry, mate. I didn’t want to not say anything.” McKittrick reached out and placed a hand on Ingrid’s forearm. “I figured you’d be going through hell with it.”
Ingrid looked down at Natasha’s arm, surprised by the intimacy. “Thanks.” She needed to change the subject. “You found any more apartments for me?”
“Nothing that beats the flat on the river, but if you’d consider Highbury something quite tasty is about to come on the market.”
Ingrid had to think hard about where Highbury was. Islington, but a bit further north. She couldn’t remember if she liked the area or not. “Tasty? How?”
“An old butcher’s shop. You get loads for your money––four stories, four bedrooms, two bathrooms––but the ground floor is a bit awkward, cause it used to be a shop, obviously, and it’s more of a yard than a garden.”
It wasn’t like Ingrid had green fingers. “How much?”
“About a hundred kay below your budget, so plenty left for the renovations. There’s even somewhere for your bike. I take it that red monstrosity over there is yours?”
Ingrid peeked over her glasses at her friend. “Monstrosity?”
“You’ll never catch me on one.”
Ingrid looked over her shoulder at her bike, then looked harder. Parked beyond it, on the far side of the road, was a black SUV. There was a man in the front seat. She nodded in his direction. “Was he there when you arrived?”
Natasha turned.
“Don’t make it too obvious,” Ingrid said. “I thought this wasn’t your first rodeo.”
Natasha stretched out an arm in a theatrical fake yawn and looked again toward the bike. “Jesus, it’s too bloody hot to be sitting in a car. What’s he up to?”
“K
eep an eye on him, will you?” Ingrid said. “See if he’s interested in number thirty-six.”
McKittrick repositioned herself so she didn’t have to twist her neck. “As you say, this isn’t my first rodeo, but if I was keeping number thirty-six under surveillance, I wouldn’t park on the other side of the square where he is. It’s not like he’s got binoculars.” She took another sip from her wine bottle. “What are we doing here, Ingrid? I mean, you must have done the basic checks. You must at least know who lives in that house.”
Ingrid wiped the sweat from her brow. “Council Tax is in the name of Lisa O’Shaughnessy.”
“And why are you interested in her?”
“I don’t know that I am.”
McKittrick let out a sigh. “Are we currently embarked on a wild goose chase?”
“Quite possibly,” Ingrid said. What she didn’t add, for fear of sounding unhinged, is that it was a wild goose chase that potentially pertained to American national security and Russian espionage. “I just thought you might like to sit in the sun and hang out in a park overlooking the dock with a friend.”
“Don’t I even get a clue as to why you’ve dragged me out here?” McKittrick got her phone out of her bag and toggled for the camera app.
Ingrid had been considering whether or not to tell McKittrick about the photos. “Remember the last time we met, I put those photos in to get developed?”
“Uh-huh.” McKittrick sounded distracted as she propped up her phone against her handbag. “I do.”
“Well.” Ingrid paused, suddenly unsure of the wisdom of continuing. “They weren’t holiday snaps.” She looked at Natasha’s phone. “What are you doing?”
“Using my spidey police senses.”
Ingrid narrowed her eyebrows. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve been looking at the guy in the car, and he keeps looking at us then turning away. So, I thought I’d film him, and then gaze at your loveliness and see if he changes his behavior when he thinks I’m not looking at him.” She smiled at Ingrid. “See? Not my first rodeo.”
“You think he’s surveilling us?”
“Us?” McKittrick raised an eyebrow. “No, lovely. You.”