by Eva Hudson
8
Ingrid scanned the sidewalk. Joggers weaved in and out of shoppers, a woman dragged screaming twins by their wrists, but Steve had disappeared. She raced back to Monkeys and Peanuts and barreled through the door. He wasn’t in there either.
“You seen Steve?” she asked the bartender.
He shrugged. “No, and I ain’t seen your money neither.”
She hadn’t paid. She plunged her hand into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled twenty euro note. She placed it on the counter. “Now have you seen him?”
“Who’s Steve?” he asked.
Ingrid bared her teeth in frustration before darting back out onto the sidewalk. He couldn’t have got far. She checked left and right, but his Tottenham Hotspur shirt was not in view. She ran over the road, dodging traffic, and scanned the beach. Apart from the fitness class and a handful of dog walkers, it was empty. Ingrid looked back toward the bar and cafés, and searched for alleys and turnings. His best bet, she reasoned, was the shopping center.
She powered across the street and burst through the revolving door into the Palàcio mall. Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You bounced out of the speakers. A maintenance worker rode a cleaning vehicle that left a wet snail trail across the tiled floor. She pulled up to get her bearings.
Ingrid was standing in the center of a three-story rotunda built around a waterfall cascading down from the third floor into a pool decorated with elves and wrapped gifts. Escalators zigzagged upwards, taking customers to circular walkways, wreathed in holly and ivy, leading them to upmarket stores and designer boutiques. Shoppers shuffled slowly, seemingly deaf to the peppy music urging them to buy more.
Out of the corner of her eye, something moved quickly.
Ingrid spun around and just caught sight of a man diving into a clothing store. She accelerated toward him, and chased him between racks and rails, but when she rounded a display of denim jackets, Ingrid pulled up sharply.
“Sorry.”
The man didn’t look anything like Steve.
Breathless, she rushed back out to the rotunda. Where the hell had he gone? Steve wasn’t fit enough or fast enough to have got away. He had to be hiding. She scanned the storefronts and tried to think like a middle-aged, overweight Englishman.
“Come on,” she said under her breath, willing Steve to make an appearance. The stores likely had rear exits; he could be anywhere by now.
She looked up. If she were Steve, she’d want to get to the top floor. She’d want a view of the entrance. Ingrid searched two tiers of balconies above her, expecting to see his pudgy face staring nervously down at her. When she couldn’t spot him, she darted between distracted shoppers toward the escalator.
“Excuse me,” she said. People turned and sneered but she pressed on, taking the stairs two at a time. “Excuse me.”
A woman with several bags blocked the escalator. Ingrid couldn’t get past. She hovered at her shoulder, desperate to leap over her shopping the moment they reached the second story.
Ingrid overtook the woman, barging in front to take the next escalator ahead of her. She heard shouting from below. She peered over the handrail to see what the commotion was on the floor of the rotunda. A group of people stared up. Ingrid followed their gaze. She twisted around to look at the balcony above her, just in time to see someone tumble over the banister and through the air, his arms circling as he fell. A collective gasp sucked the air out of the mall as they watched Steve somersault and hit his head on the edge of the fountain. His body slammed onto the marble floor. He didn’t move.
Ingrid reached the top of the escalator and stumbled. Adrenaline flamed across her skin. She regained her balance and gripped the balcony handrail. She watched in horror as screaming shoppers circled Steve’s lifeless body. No one was brave enough to approach him.
Ingrid raised her gaze and looked straight ahead, across the rotunda, to the spot on the third level where Steve had fallen. A man caught her eye, then quickly glanced away. He started running. Steve hadn’t fallen. He had been pushed. Ingrid gave chase, speeding around the curve of the balcony, dodging shoppers gawking down at the tragedy below. The running man was athletic, well-groomed, and wore an expensive-looking sweater tight over his pecs. He shoved his way through a set of double doors and disappeared from sight. Ingrid kept running, determined to make up the forty yards he had on her.
She pushed through the doors and found herself in the emergency stairwell. Footsteps echoed off the bare white walls from below. Ingrid followed, taking the stairs so fast she fell against the wall. Her lungs sucked in air and she propelled herself downward.
A door opened below, drawing the Christmas music into the stairwell. She tore down the remaining steps and barreled out of the swinging doors. She was back in the rotunda. A muted crowd had gathered around Steve’s body. No one was attempting CPR. One man was on his phone. Shop assistants stood at the threshold of their stores, unable to leave their stations, open mouthed with horror as George Michael reminisced about his last Christmas. A few heads turned as the well-built man dashed out of the mall.
Ingrid kept going and barged through the revolving door out into the salty air. She scoured the sidewalk and spotted his light blue sweater. She accelerated. She was thirty yards behind him. Twenty.
He dived into the open door of a waiting car. The driver of the black Audi TT didn’t wait for it to close before speeding off. Ingrid stared as the car roared into the distance, clasping her head with both hands.
“Damn!”
Her mouth fell open and she breathed deeply. Her chest burned. What the hell had just happened? Dazed, she spun around, expecting hordes to tumble out of the shopping center in pursuit. The door revolved, but no one left the building. There were no police sirens. No wail of an approaching ambulance.
She was in almost the exact same spot where, just a few minutes beforehand, Steve told her about the second key. She pictured his expression when he’d seen the man in the Audi. It had been one of total fear.
What was it he’d said? That’s not what they promised.
Ingrid started to run. If they had killed Steve, what would they do to her?
9
Bad weather created a backlog of flights at Heathrow and Ingrid didn’t get back to London until late. She picked up a change of clothes at the airport and made her way to Marshall’s office. His couch would do for a second night.
The FBI’s offices were almost deserted, even though the Legal Attaché Program employed fifty-five people. Beneath the Attaché himself was an assistant and a deputy, and under them were the counterterrorism, counterintelligence and criminal teams. Though calling Ingrid and Jen the criminal ‘team’ was a stretch. It was unusual for the place to be empty. Either a huge CT operation was underway, or everyone was at Christmas parties. Whichever was correct, Ingrid was grateful for the privacy. It would be hard to have the polite ‘how are you getting on’ conversations without giving something away about Steve.
It was impossible to tell if Marshall’s office had been cleaned since his death. He had always been preternaturally tidy. Even after a ten-mile run, he rarely had a hair out of place. Ingrid caught herself smiling as she remembered how he preened over his hair, a perfect blond mop he maintained with vanity and lemon juice.
The delay at Faro airport had given her time to work out how she would bring Steve’s killers to justice. She turned on Marshall’s computer and logged in. While it creaked and whirred its way to life, Ingrid’s gaze lingered on a framed photo of Marshall’s sister Carolyn. A month ago, Carolyn had been a student at a London university embarking on her first adult relationship. Following Marshall’s murder, she was now back in South Carolina and not straying far from her grieving parents’ sight. Ingrid should call her and check in to see how she was doing. Ingrid pulled open Marshall’s drawer in search of a Kleenex.
Needless to say, Marshall’s drawer had plastic dividers creating neat squares for pens, loose change, thumb tacks and rubber bands
. There was no emergency pack of tissues, but in one chamber was something that caught Ingrid’s breath. A key chain of a little Scottish terrier. She had bought it for Marshall on their first weekend away. It had been a kitsch joke from a seaside gift shop after they’d walked for miles along a beach in Delaware and mapped out their life together, down to the pets they would have and the names they would give them.
“Hey there, T-Rex.”
She was amazed he hadn’t thrown it away when she broke off their engagement. She picked it up, tinkling three keys stamped with the brands Yale and Chubb. House keys, not car keys. She should probably offer to clear out his home as well as his desk. Ingrid reached behind her and slipped the bunch into her jacket pocket.
The computer emitted a self-satisfied murmur that announced it was ready for action. Ingrid dialed into the embassy’s security logs. If neither she nor Steve had been riding her bike on November eighteenth, someone else in the building had taken it. Someone with contacts, influence and a network. Whoever was riding knew that Steve could name them, and they had forced him to leave the country. And when they feared he was about to squeal, they ensured his silence. Ingrid shuddered at the memory of Steve’s head hitting the edge of the waterfall. She resisted the temptation to search for news from Portugal. Doing so would leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs she’d have difficulty explaining.
Ingrid peered at the security logs from the eighteenth. The good news was the embassy was one of London’s most secure buildings. No one got in without an employee pass, or a barcoded visitor pass from the security desk. The bad news was 1883 people had entered the building on the day in question.
She rested her chin on her hand and examined the lengthy list on her monitor. She flicked the mouse and watched the names cascade down the screen. It was going to be a long night. She didn’t know who she was looking for, so she started by searching for her own name. The log showed her arriving at 08:02 and leaving at 17:40, almost exactly the same time the faked CCTV images had her exiting the garage. Was that a coincidence, or had whoever infiltrated the surveillance footage checked the attendance record first? Perhaps that had been doctored too.
She scanned the names on either side of hers, hoping to see one that would stand out, a flashing icon saying ‘suspect’. Her eyes alighted on Marshall’s name, and on Jen’s. The ambassador’s name leaped out as did a certain George Clooney’s. She guessed it wasn’t the actor, otherwise she’d have heard some gossip. Some names came in clusters. A run of Hispanic surnames, a batch of military ranks, a delegation of women. She clocked several Arabic names in a row and checked it wasn’t a visit from the Emirate of Jihar. Her eyes began to water. The list became a jumble of meaningless words that decayed further into random letters the more she looked. She needed a way of whittling 1883 names down to a single suspect.
Ingrid got to her feet and paced the room, just as she had seen Marshall do many times. She could visualize him, a hand in his pocket pulling his shirt tight across his abs, the other pushing his hair out of his face, peering out of the window at Grosvenor Square below. She stood where he used to, and looked down through the murky, rain-smeared windows to the street. A sad-looking Deliveroo scooter weaved between the black cabs that always circled the embassy.
Bingo.
Scooter riders didn’t need a permit in the UK, just a certificate of basic training. But to ride a motorcycle like hers, you had to train, and you needed to pass two tests to get a license. Ingrid didn’t know what percentage of the population had motorcycle permits, but her instincts told her it was less than ten percent.
Jen normally did the data analysis for her, and it made Ingrid appreciate her assistant even more. She really was going to have to make things up with Jen and made a mental note to find those pink pearl earrings. She checked the date in the corner of the screen: she had almost two weeks to buy them before Jen’s last day in the office.
Two weeks? Ingrid hoped she’d have left the country by then.
Ingrid cross referenced the attendance log with DMV and DVLA records on both sides of the Atlantic and found 122 people with motorcycle licenses. Nice work. Inside half an hour, she’d shrunk her list of suspects by ninety percent. But that was still too many people to interview on her own.
To shrink the pool further, she overlaid the remaining 122 with convictions for DUIs and dangerous driving. It was the kind of methodical police work she’d never seen a cop do on TV, but after another hour her list had just eleven names on it. Now she was in business.
Nine of them worked in the building, two were visitors. Only five were on site between 17:00 and 18:00 on the eighteenth. She allowed herself a smile. She had narrowed 1883 down to five in just over two hours. There was something very sweet about hunting down a killer when he had absolutely no idea she was coming for him.
Ingrid created files for her final five and pulled up the personnel records for the ones who were on the staff. She scrutinized a photo of Angela Dees, a twenty-three-year-old payroll clerk who lived, according to Google Street View, in a rundown housing project at the far end of the Central Line. The idea that this young woman whose Facebook posts were about Love Island and cavapoos was involved in the cover-up of a hit and run was somewhere between unlikely and preposterous. No, she was looking for someone with the means and motive, someone who could access the embassy’s surveillance systems and have the reach to get Steve killed in Portugal. She was searching for someone with a network, and someone with a reputation to protect. That left her with two suspects.
Man, she loved her work.
Marcus Williams, twenty, was the son of the ambassador, Frances Byrne-Williams. Ingrid had worked a little with the ambassador, mostly on the case that had resulted in her being gifted the Triumph, and it seemed unlikely a woman dedicated to public service would have raised a cavalier killer. Her son’s online activity displayed the expected mix of Ivy League studies, sporting achievements and internships with senators. While he had a smug expression and oozed a strain of entitlement that made Ingrid bristle, he only had an A1 license that limited him to riding bikes below 125cc. Ingrid’s Triumph had a sixteen hundred engine. Which led her onto suspect number two.
Carlos Estevez was part of the Marines’ diplomatic corps and was one of twenty-three Marines working in the London embassy. While civilians did most of the security, certain functions were fulfilled by Marines who could carry weapons on embassy premises.
Ingrid stared at Estevez’s file. He was twenty-six, from Texas, and had served in Afghanistan. On Facebook, Ingrid found a photo of him straddling a Honda Rebel. On one forearm was a tattoo of a vintage Enfield. If he liked retro-looking bikes, he was likely to be sweet on her Triumph.
Estevez had access to the surveillance systems, a license to ride, and an international military network to call on. Ingrid pushed her chair back and smiled. She had found her man.
10
“Hey. You’re in already.” Jen hung up her coat.
“Morning.” Ingrid wasn’t about to reveal she had slept in Marshall’s office again. “You have a good night last night?”
Jen’s face twisted with awkwardness. “Oh, yes, thanks. It was, like, just a few drinks.” She took her seat and switched on her computer.
Ingrid didn’t know where she stood with Jen and was not about to pout at being left out. “You must have a lot of people you want to catch up with before you go.”
Jen didn’t answer. Things were not normally stilted between them.
“Listen, Jen. I’d like to take you out for a meal before you get on a plane.”
Jen stuck out her bottom lip. “That’d be nice.” Jen’s eyes were glued to her screen, studiously avoiding contact with Ingrid’s. “We might have to make do with a cocktail at the ambassador’s ball. I saw you got an invitation.”
“You’re going?”
“You sound surprised.”
Everything Ingrid said was upsetting Jen. “No, excited. We get to hang out.” Though the truth was Ingrid
had no intention of going.
“Jack needs to be there.”
“Getting ready for the role of a diplomat’s wife?”
“I guess. Though I was thinking, once we’re back in the States I might, like, join the diplomatic corps myself.”
Ingrid smiled. “You’d be great at it! I’d send you straight to the UN. Put you in charge of global peace.” She’d gone too far. She sounded flippant. Jen would think she was mocking her. “You know if you need any kind of reference, I’d be happy to write one.”
Jen didn’t look at her. “Thanks.”
After several minutes of silence, Ingrid got to her feet. “Listen.” This was going to be uncomfortable. “About the other day.”
Jen kept her focus on her computer.
“I’m real sorry. I’ve been pretty messed up, but that’s no excuse for… for not saying goodbye.” Ingrid thought she was handling it fairly well. She plunged her hands into her pants pockets and leaned against her desk. “Not my finest hour. Anyway, like I say, I’m sorry.”
Jen’s fingers hovered over her keyboard. She was as still as a photograph.
“So, if you, um, if you have a blank evening in your diary any day soon, I’d like to buy you dinner. Say thank you for being amazing these past few years.”
Jen remained frozen.
Ingrid slunk back behind her desk. “You know I’m going to miss you, right?”
Jen was the person she had spoken to the most, and spent the most time with, since she’d been in London. She was the one who had supplied cough drops and Tylenol and tampons and found her keys when she’d mislaid them. Jen was family.
Jen’s lips puckered. “Thank you.” Her fingers blitzed the keyboard for a few seconds before she delicately ran a nail under one eye and carried on.
Ingrid returned to the profile of Carlos Estevez on her screen. According to the Marine working the overnight security desk, Estevez would start his shift at eight. The Marine Diplomatic Protection Corps, she’d discovered, was considered a prestige move in a regiment where there weren’t many routes to promotion. Marines who worked in the embassy weren’t avoiding deployment into conflict zones, they were dedicating themselves to the regiment for the long haul.