by Eva Hudson
Libby looked scared. “How do I know I can trust you? I just saw the way you were together over there. You just show up. Within hours of Jacob dying. How do I know you’re not here to cover things up and keep your pal in position?”
Marsha’s nostrils flared. “I don’t know of a single double agent in the bureau’s history who has had an accomplice. The idea that both Agent Skyberg and myself might be foreign assets is fanciful. To say the least.” There was an edge of anger in her voice. She tapped the side of the desk with impatient fingers. “Libby, do you realize that your boyfriend was under suspicion himself? If he killed himself, it could be because he feared he was about to be found out. And if he was killed, it could have been to prevent him from switching sides.”
Libby blinked rapidly.
“How well did you know him?” Marsha asked.
Libby cast her eyes downward, then made deliberate eye contact with her new boss. “Well enough to know he was not a traitor.” Her bottom lip quivered.
While Marsha and Libby were talking, Ingrid had been thinking about the photos in her drawer. She had been sure they identified DeWalt as Skylark, but she now realized all they indicated was that Mulroony thought DeWalt was Skylark. She took a step toward Libby. “Do you know any reason why someone would think DeWalt was a spy?”
Libby’s eyes darted from Ingrid to Marsha and back again. “No.”
“Because someone did. Someone really did.”
“I, ah, um.” Libby was flustered.
“I appreciate you and I haven’t got off to the greatest of starts,” Ingrid said, “but if you know some reason why anyone would think Jacob DeWalt was a spy, then we can figure out why he died yesterday.”
Libby’s face flitted between aggression and confusion. She looked at Marsha, then back to Ingrid. Her shoulders rose and fell. Then she nodded. “The only thing I can think of, and I mean the only, was that he was a people pleaser.”
“Go on,” Marsha said, her tone conciliatory.
“He was a scratcher of backs. He liked to help out. Whether it was his drinking buddies or his golf buddies.” Again, her eyes switched between the two of them, searching for support. “He bent the rules occasionally. I’ll admit he didn’t always do things by the book, but he took care of his friends. He was always balancing the favors. Maybe…” She paused. “Maybe someone thought he owed them?”
Marsha and Ingrid exchanged looks.
“Which fraternity was he in?” Ingrid asked.
“Phi Gamma Delta.”
“Was he a freemason?”
“I, um, I don’t know. I don’t think so.” Libby’s head turned at a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Marsha said.
It was Penny. Ingrid would always think of her as Marshall’s gatekeeper, but her ashen face was a reminder that—until the day before—she had been DeWalt’s right-hand woman. “Hi.” She pushed a piece of dark hair behind her ear.
“Penny, right?” Marsha asked.
Penny bobbed her head. “It’s the Met.”
Marsha checked her watch. “They’re here already?”
Penny pursed her vermillion lips. “Nope. They say they don’t need to come.”
Ingrid and Marsha checked in with one another. “Huh?” they said in unison.
“They told me they’re satisfied it was suicide.”
Marsha jutted out a hip and rested a hand on it. “Please come in and close the door.”
Penny did so, then leaned against the door, holding her hands together in front of her tightly fitted skirt. She looked anxiously at Libby’s red eyes, then at Ingrid and Marsha’s serious faces. “What’s going on?”
Marsha moved in Penny’s direction. “You have worked closely with Agent DeWalt for a few months now, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“You knew him pretty well, right?”
“He was my boss. We weren’t friends.”
“But you spent a lot of time in his company?”
“I guess.”
“If anyone would have seen something, either in his behavior, or his correspondence, that indicated he would take his own life, it would probably be you, right?”
“Um, I guess.”
“And did you?”
Penny exhaled and gazed into the middle distance. “No, nothing. Nothing that’s come to mind, at least.”
Marsha moved over to the window and looked down at the view. Her fingers steepled under her chin, giving the appearance of being deep in thought. Ingrid took over the role of questioner.
“You coping okay?” When Ingrid was acting SSA, she had worked closely with Penny. She was very well aware that, after Marshall, DeWalt was the second boss to have died on Penny inside a year.
“No one’s going to want to work with me ever again, are they? I’m like the black widow.”
Ingrid placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, I didn’t die when I sat in that office, did I?”
Penny let out a little snort. “Everyone knows you’re indestructible, Ingrid.”
“Oh great, so you’re the black widow and I’m, what, a cockroach?”
Penny was smiling now. Ingrid smiled back. “Obviously Agent Gibson is going to need your help a lot over the next couple of days, but maybe you should schedule a little down time for next week? Take a day off?”
“Thanks.” Penny’s eyes brimmed at Ingrid’s kindness. “I better…” She pointed her thumb at the door behind her. “Get back to it.”
Marsha turned her head toward Penny. “Would you mind pushing back everything else until…” She checked her watch. “Say, ten-thirty?”
“Sure thing.”
When Penny had left, the three women took a moment. It was Ingrid who spoke first. “I was in his apartment. There’s just no way it was suicide.”
“So,” Marsha said carefully, “the Metropolitan Police either have budget constraints and know we’ll investigate anyway. Or?”
“Or?” Libby said.
Ingrid looked her right in the eye. “Or someone is leaning on them not to investigate.”
Libby looked confused. “Why wouldn’t someone want it investigated?”
Ingrid didn’t miss a beat before answering. “That’s exactly what I intend to find out.”
31
Ingrid lingered outside DeWalt’s office for Marsha to appear. She fiddled with her watch, scrolling through her fitness stats in a bid not to look like a faithful puppy waiting for its owner, which was exactly how she felt. Seeing Marsha after all this time—how long was it? Twelve years? Thirteen?—was like hearing the song you haven’t danced to since high school but still know all the words to.
“Okay,” Marsha said, striding out of the door. “Let’s do this.” There was nothing in her appearance or demeanor that suggested an abrupt uprooting from whatever her previous posting had been, or a transatlantic flight at extremely short notice, yet it was only fifteen hours since DeWalt had landed in the parking lot of Century Mills. What had Sol said to her to make her drop everything and come to London? “You speak to the Met?”
“Interview room is this way.” They started walking. “Yep. Spoke to DS Paphides. He said his DCS—”
“DCS?”
“Detective chief superintendent. He reallocated the team to the major incident squad. There’s been a missing kid out there for the past week. There are posters everywhere. Anyway, there’s been a sighting and they need officers on the street for the optics. Because if the kid dies and they hadn’t thrown everything at it…”
“Obviously you told him we’d be continuing our own inquiries?”
“Obviously. Requested all files to be sent over immediately.” Ingrid led her through a series of corridors to another bank of elevators. “You ever worked out of an embassy before?”
“No, this is my first.”
“Well, there’s a suite of interview rooms Immigration Services use for citizenship applications. They’re designed to intimidate.”
“Sounds ideal.” Marsha
lingered outside the elevator, clutching her iPad and files. “We’re not taking this?”
Ingrid was already halfway through the door to the stairs. “Um.” She thought about getting stuck with DeWalt and did not want to risk being alone in an enclosed space with Marsha. Marsha pointed to her shoes. She wasn’t planning on running after any perps today.
“Ah, understood,” Ingrid said. “Third floor.”
Marsha pushed the button, and Ingrid noticed a wedding band. Ingrid was suddenly engulfed by questions. Was she married to a man or a woman? Who on earth would be worthy of the magnificent Marsha Gibson? She wanted to know. She really wanted to know. The elevator doors opened almost immediately. Three people were already inside. Marsha and Ingrid looked at each other, then at their feet. Another opportunity to ask about the ring would present itself.
“It’s down here,” Ingrid said, leading the way through the third-floor warren. She handed Marsha a printout of the background information she had pulled on James McAvenny. It ran to several pages. “I haven’t had a chance to read it all. There’s a lot about this guy online.”
“He’s legit?” Marsha asked.
“Let’s find out.”
They reached the interview suite where a receptionist guided them to the room where McAvenny was waiting. Marsha stretched out an arm and touched Ingrid’s. “Before we go in, I just wanted to say, it’s so nice to see you.”
Ingrid demurred. “You too.” She couldn’t quite manage eye contact. “We must, like, have dinner or do something fun while you’re here.”
Marsha smiled. “Perfect. Shall we?”
Ingrid pushed down the lever and opened the door. “James McAvenny?”
A crumpled middle-aged man with lank hair and heavily stained teeth looked up at them.
“I am Agent Skyberg. This is my colleague, Agent Gibson. Don’t get up.”
McAvenny shuffled back into his seat on the other side of a stainless-steel table that reminded Ingrid of a mortician’s slab. Rectangles of diffuse bright light created the illusion of windows in the completely white room. An air conditioning unit purred above them. Buttons underneath the table allowed the brightness, the temperature, and the noise levels to be manipulated. Ingrid pulled up a black plastic chair and sat down, spreading her paperwork in front of her. Marsha stayed standing.
“Did you say ‘agent’?” McAvenny asked.
“Special Agent. We’re with the FBI.”
McAvenny’s eyes popped, and then he leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Well, well, well.”
“What does that mean, Mr. McAvenny?”
“It means I’ve bloody well got myself a story, doesn’t it?”
Ingrid opened the folder in front of her. Without looking up at him, she asked, “And where will you be publishing this story of yours? On the phone, you mentioned you work for the Sydney Morning Herald.” She eyeballed him. “I called them. They said you haven’t worked there for eight years.”
He looked slightly less pleased with himself.
“The most recent article of yours I found was published on a website called Brighton Beat. As far as I can tell, it’s a website for a suburb of Melbourne that mostly features restaurant openings, beach combing finds and missing pets.” She gave him her best smile. “Why are you in London, Mr. McAvenny?”
He yawned. His plane had landed at six fifty-five. He hadn’t wasted any time before putting a call into Skylark. “Have I done something wrong?” he asked.
Marsha flipped through the slim dossier behind Ingrid, and made the kind of ‘a-ha’ and ‘h-hmm’ noises that made interviewees nervous.
Ingrid looked at the printout. “Let’s see. Kidnap—”
“My wife wouldn’t let me see my kids!”
“Possession of cocaine—”
“I’m a journalist!”
“So, what, it’s a tool of the trade, like a notebook or a Dictaphone?” Ingrid returned to her list. “Two speeding tickets and a caution for gross indecency—”
“I was taking a slash!”
“So, yes, to answer your question, you have done something wrong, but, ooh,” Ingrid tapped the file, “not for the past eighteen months or so.”
He folded his arms indignantly over the dome of his belly.
Ingrid examined the controls beneath the desk and increased the air-conditioning. McAvenny had the sour aroma of someone who hadn’t changed their clothes for two days. “Why do you think you’re here, Mr. McAvenny?”
He pulled off his horn-rimmed spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He palmed his hair over his scalp. If he had gone gray, you could generously say he was going for the Einstein look, but there was something sleazy about his thinning, long hair; like an old rocker reliving his glory days. It didn’t help that it was unwashed. McAvenny popped his glasses back on and sighed heavily. “Saskia Cole,” he said. “That’s why I’m here, right?”
Ingrid had no idea who Saskia Cole was. She glanced at Marsha in case she’d seen the name in the dossier. Marsha shrugged and Ingrid returned her attention to McAvenny. “Well done, Mr. McAvenny. You’ve stumped us. Who the heck is Saskia Cole?”
He looked surprised. “Who was Saskia Cole, more like.” He stared at each of them in turn. “Bloody typical. We swallow a bucketful of US news, about your stolen election and oil spills, but you guys don’t have a clue what’s going on in the rest of the world.”
“You may have noticed that we are in the rest of the world,” Marsha pointed out.
“Fair point.” He inhaled at length, then continued. “Saskia Cole was murdered five years ago. They tried to make it look like an accident, but she was definitely murdered.”
“They?” Ingrid asked.
“The Russians. Jesus, you really don’t know this story, do you?”
Russians? Ingrid sensed there were some dots in danger of joining up. “Any particular Russians?”
“Two FSB operatives. Evgeny Poliakoff and Josef Polinin. Though those probably aren’t their real names.”
Marsha placed her iPad on the table in front of Ingrid. It displayed a report from an Australian newspaper dated March 7, 2012. Woman killed in robbery was former Herald journalist. It was accompanied by a photo of a woman in her fifties wearing a helmet and flak jacket emblazoned with the word ‘press’. It looked like she was reporting from Afghanistan. “Was Saskia Cole a friend of yours?” Ingrid asked.
“More of a mentor. She was my first editor when I worked at the ABC. A bloody brilliant journalist. Didn’t give a flying fuck about anything other than the truth. She never took any bullshit or flannel from anyone. Second sourced everything.”
Ingrid scanned the report. She felt the heat from Marsha’s body just inches behind her own. “I can’t see anything in this report about Russia.” Ingrid locked eyes with him. “So, what do you think is the real story?”
He looked at one then the other. “Can I get a glass of water?”
Ingrid pushed her chair back slowly. “Sure.” She ducked out into the corridor and filled three mugs from the tap in the small, filthy kitchen area. She paused outside the door before going back in to remind herself that no matter how unlikeable McAvenny was, he wasn’t a suspect, he hadn’t done anything wrong, and the most important thing was to keep him talking. She plastered a smile on her face and pushed the door open. “Here you go.” She distributed the mugs and sat back down. “Did I miss much?”
“We were discussing what the British English term for liquor store is,” Marsha said.
Ingrid wrinkled her nose. “They call it an off-license. Why?”
“Because Ms. Cole was killed in what Mr. McAvenny calls a ‘bottle shop’.”
Ingrid didn’t want to get distracted by semantics. “Do you want to tell me the story?”
McAvenny nodded. “It’s pretty simple, really. There was a hold-up in a bottle shop. Gunmen asked the guy at the cash desk for money. Saskia got a bullet in the neck. Masked men ride off on a motorbike and are never seen again.”
/> Ingrid rubbed her nose. “Where do the Russians fit in?”
McAvenny yawned before answering. “Sorry. I’ve been awake for what feels like a week. I don’t know what time zone I’m in but I could murder a beer.”
“It’s ten a.m.,” Ingrid said.
“Is that too early?” When neither of them answered, he carried on. “Yeah, right. So normally when there’s a stickup at a store, it’s some local kid who’s high on meth, nicked a neighborhood bike and the cops know who it is before they get a chance to look at the CCTV, right?”
He wasn’t wrong. Ingrid shrugged. “Go on.”
“Well, these armed robbers arrived on a brand-new Honda with fake plates, fired a gun that had never been used in a crime before, according to the ballistics report, and the money they took has never gone back into circulation.”
Ingrid raised her hand. “Let me stop you there. Are you saying that the target of the holdup wasn’t the liquor store, it was your friend, and the holdup was the cover story?”
McAvenny smiled. Color reddened his cheeks. “Yes. Thank you! You get it.”
“I might get it, Mr. McAvenny, but I’m not sure I buy it. Just to be clear, you’re saying the robbers were actually Russian agents committing an assassination on sovereign Australian soil?”
He leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. He peered at Ingrid and then Marsha. “Yeah, like duh. That’s not what I’m saying, it’s what bloody happened.”
The Russians had certainly murdered people on UK soil, hence the Hawking Review into Andropov’s death. “And what do the police in Australia think?” Ingrid asked.
“They think it was an out-of-town holdup. That’s why they’ve got no leads.”
“And you think it’s the Russians because?”
McAvenny reached down to his bag. Marsha and Ingrid both leaned forward to see what he was doing. He dived into a carryall and yanked out several cardboard folders of files. “I can’t believe I have to travel half way round the world to get someone in law enforcement to take this seriously.” He spread out the files into four piles on the stainless-steel table top. “These are Saskia’s notes. She was working on a story about illegal arms deals. I think she found something out no one wanted her to know and…” He made a pistol from his fingers and pointed to his head.