The Ingrid Skyberg Mystery Series: Books 1-4: The Ingrid Skyberg Series Boxset

by Eva Hudson

  Ingrid handed her a paper napkin. “You have a little…” She pointed to her own chin. McKittrick quickly wiped the spot of mayo away. “So Faber shouldn’t expect a four a.m. call from the boys in blue?”

  “Not unless we discover something specific to link her to the death.”

  “And when will you be getting the postmortem?” Ingrid pulled a shred of lettuce from between the slices of bread and popped it in her mouth.

  “This afternoon. I’ll ask one of the lads to get it to you by close of play.”

  “You must have had a preliminary report by now?”

  McKittrick swallowed another rushed mouthful and nodded. “No surprises. Apart from the massive trauma to the head, there were only insignificant injuries. It’s looking like an accident to me.”

  “But that was one hell of a head wound.”

  “I know, so we’re keeping an open mind.”

  “You have a time of death?”

  McKittrick finished her sandwich and tossed the messy bag into a trash can at the curb. “Pathologist puts it between midnight and two a.m.”

  “Toxicology? Had she been drinking? Drug-taking?”

  “We’ll get the bloods back later too.” McKittrick’s shoulders crept up toward her ears.

  “Sorry, I’m adding to your stress. Wasn’t my intention. Had thought maybe we could have a nice catch-up.”

  McKittrick sighed. “I think what we have here is a case of this being a higher priority for you than it is for me. You know how many cases I’m overseeing?”

  Ingrid didn’t.

  “Five murders, and one of them is really, horrifically complex. For as long as it looks likely the girl tripped on her landlord’s Axminster shag pile and collided with his chrome and smoked-glass coffee table, I’ve got other things that need my attention.”

  “Understood.” Inside though, Ingrid was furious. The first twenty-four hours are crucial in every investigation. If the pathologist suspects foul play, the Met will have squandered a precious opportunity to gather evidence.

  Ingrid looked down at her sandwich bag; the greasy mayo had started to leech through the paper. Suddenly her appetite vanished. McKittrick was already walking away, heading back to the station. Ingrid raced to catch up with her. “Lauren’s parents are flying in tomorrow. I’m meeting them at Heathrow in the afternoon. They’ll want to know if their daughter was murdered, the local police are doing everything possible to find her killer.”

  “I’ll do my best to see you’ve got the latest developments by the time they land.” McKittrick had picked up her pace.

  Ingrid remembered the tissue. “Natasha, slow down.”

  She didn’t. “And there’s also something you can do for me.”

  “Name it.”

  “Stop teasing my constable.”

  “Your constable?”

  “Mills. He’s been asking about you. Wondered if it’d be OK to give you a call.”

  “Really, I’ve not spoken more than two words to him.”

  “Well, your movie-star good looks have done the trick, then.” McKittrick smiled mischievously. At last, a little of the Natasha Ingrid was used to had made an appearance.

  “You did tell him I was engaged?”

  “No. Not really. Must have slipped my mind.” Another smile. “Besides, the way you talk about Marshall, I don’t really see you as the marrying kind.”

  McKittrick’s throwaway comment almost winded Ingrid. “Really?” She was rooted to the spot while McKittrick marched on. She caught up with her on the police station’s front steps. Ingrid grabbed her friend’s arm. “There’s something Faber mentioned earlier.”

  McKittrick turned. “Oh yeah?”

  “Lauren’s laptop. Did you find it? Faber said it wasn’t on the desk where she usually kept it.”

  “No, there was no laptop. Or tablet. We haven’t even located a mobile phone. In the apartment or at the college. Perhaps you could ask her parents if they have receipts for her devices. The serial numbers would be extremely helpful.”

  “But you’ve put traces on her number, her email?”

  “I’m sure my team are doing all of that. The moment anyone switches Shelbourne’s phone on, we’ll know about it.” McKittrick turned to go. “So”—she looked over her shoulder—“what should I tell lovestruck Mills?”

  Ingrid smiled. “Tell him I’ve got an appointment at an escort agency.”

  10

  Ingrid’s trip to Escort Angels, the agency who supplied Greg Brewster’s nighttime companion, wasn’t exactly fruitful. The address they had for Barry Cline was fake. The number they had for him rang and rang without diverting to an answering service. And the woman running the agency couldn’t be entirely sure the photo they had on file for him was a good likeness. When Ingrid got back to the embassy, she unsurprisingly discovered ‘Barry Cline’ wasn’t in any database because it was almost certainly a fake name. Ingrid arranged for the phone number to be monitored, and checked to see if the laptop had been handed into the police, or London Transport lost property, or a branch of Cash Converters. She had very low expectations of finding it. She still wanted to know, however, what the hell was on it that required it to be reported to the embassy. More than that, she really wanted to get to the bottom of why she didn’t have sufficient security clearance to access Brewster’s files in the archives.

  Unable to face another night in her hotel room and a long conversation with Marshall or her mom, Ingrid got on the bike and returned to Loriners. She was meeting Lauren Shelbourne’s parents in the morning and wanted to be able to tell them as much as possible about the circumstances around her daughter’s death. She kept seeing the gash on Lauren’s forehead and couldn’t believe such a wound could be inflicted by simply falling over. Ingrid fully expected the autopsy report to indicate she had been murdered. The suicide of the girl the week before and the whore graffiti meant Ingrid wanted to do a little digging. She remembered the poster for a music concert on campus and thought it was a better use of her time than another self-flagellation session in the hotel gym.

  After the gig—a poorly attended cacophony of discordant experimentation—Ingrid found herself on an almost deserted campus and decided to take a look around. Apart from the odd camera, there was no obvious sign of a security presence save for occasional signs warning of dogs and specially trained staff.

  Ten minutes after the musicians left the stage, she seemed to be all alone on the campus. The main piazza was deathly silent. When she reached the science block, she stopped: even in the dim light cast by the distant streetlamps, she could see fresh paint dripping down the facade. She checked left and right, but the campus appeared to be deserted. The vandals had dispensed with words and chosen to spray three identical symbols on the newly scrubbed concrete:

  // // //

  She’d never seen anything like it before. Was it a symbol from some ancient language studied in the linguistics department? She got her phone out to take a photo, when the silence was broken by a clang of metal hitting metal, the sound echoing around the piazza. She turned toward the noise and saw a spray can bouncing off walls and steel handrails as it fell earthwards. A level up from the ground, two dark-clad figures leaned over the walkway wall.

  “Hey! What are you doing?” Ingrid ran toward them. They just stood there watching her, making no attempt to escape, no doubt confident that the only way up onto their level was via a long ramp at the far end of the piazza. They laughed as she approached. Determined to wipe the smiles from their faces, Ingrid accelerated and launched herself at the lower wall, landing cleanly on top and using her momentum to leap upward, high enough to grab the metal rail on the next level up. She swung her right leg out and up, the rubber toe of her sneaker catching the edge of the walkway wall. Though she couldn’t see them, she heard the unmistakable shuffle of feet sliding over cement. They weren’t laughing anymore. Using both arms and her right leg for leverage, she pulled her body over the rail and rolled onto the walkway. In
the gloom she could just make out the two graffiti artists at the end of the walkway.

  One turned left, the other right.

  She got to her feet and ran. She went after the heavier of the two, thinking a slower man would be easier to catch. Ingrid leaped onto the wall running alongside the walkway, intending to jump on him from above, but in the dark she hadn’t seen the wall was way too narrow to run at full speed. The vandal started to pull away. She stopped and was about to drop back onto the walkway when something slammed into her calves, pushing her forward into thin air. She struggled to stay upright. A second later she hit the ground feet first and rolled quickly, spreading the impact of the landing. The second vandal peered down at her from the walkway above, a short length of wood in his hands.

  She scrambled to her feet. Her left ankle rolled sideways as she put her weight on it, forcing her back onto the ground, searing pain shooting from her foot up her leg toward the knee. She grabbed her ankle and watched helplessly as the black-clad figure escaped, disappearing into the gloom.

  A sudden bright flash lit up the walkway. Ingrid turned. Another flash blinded her momentarily. It was quickly followed by another and another. Ingrid held a hand up to her eyes and tried to blink away the purple stain on her retinas. With each blink a shadowy figure that had materialized in front of her became more solid. She recognized the boots first: shiny black knee-lengths. Then the raincoat came into focus. Angela Tate. The journalist.

  Goddammit.

  After another bright flash, Ingrid realized Tate was taking pictures of her with her cell phone.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Stop that.” She grabbed at the phone, but Tate pulled away swiftly and slipped it safely into her coat pocket.

  “That was quite a display,” Tate said. “Isn’t that what the kids do? Parkour, isn’t it?”

  “Did you get a photo of them?”

  “It was too dark. Besides, their faces were covered.” The journalist held out a hand to Ingrid, which she batted away.

  Ingrid slowly stood up and tested her left ankle, gradually easing her weight onto it. It was sore but still functioning. “What are you doing here?”

  Angela Tate looked Ingrid up and down. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  A set of lights came on over the main concourse below them. Tate peered over the walkway wall. “It appears the security firm, dogs included, have chosen to make an appearance.”

  Ingrid grabbed the journalist and dragged her further into the shadows. She dropped her voice to a whisper. “What are you doing here?”

  “Research. I’m working on a story about Loriners. You know about the suicide last week?”

  “Why don’t you tell me about it?” Ingrid folded her arms and nodded encouragingly.

  “Not here. I was rather hoping you’d give me a ride home. I doubt I’ll pick up a cab at this hour. Presumably your car’s parked nearby?”

  “Motorcycle.”

  A dog barked in the distance.

  “I think it’s time we made a swift exit. A motorcycle, eh? Sounds like fun. Haven’t been on a bike for years.”

  “Sorry. I only have one helmet.”

  “Even better. I like to feel the wind in my hair.”

  “No way.”

  “Do you want me to tell you what I know about the suicide or not?”

  Without another word, Ingrid led Tate through campus, managing to avoid security guards and their dogs, to where she’d parked the Triumph Tiger. Ingrid unlocked the top box and handed the helmet to the journalist. “You wear it. Just in case we have an accident.”

  “Let’s just make sure we don’t, shall we?”

  11

  After an uncomfortable ten minutes of the journalist squeezing her hands so tight around Ingrid’s waist she thought her dinner might find its way back up her digestive tract, they finally arrived at Tate’s home in Kennington, just a few miles from Loriners in south London. Tate led Ingrid down a flight of stone steps to the basement apartment of a tall, narrow house in the middle of a row of identical properties.

  Ingrid hesitated on the threshold. “Should I take off my sneakers?”

  “God, no. We don’t stand on ceremony here.”

  “We?”

  “Figure of speech. We’re quite alone.”

  She joined Tate in a narrow kitchen at the far end of the hallway. The woman dropped her coat and gloves onto a chair and lined up bottles of liquor on the kitchen bench. “What are you in the mood for? A drop of brandy to keep out the cold? Or a shot of tequila to get the gray cells firing?”

  “A glass of water is just fine.”

  “Don’t be a party pooper. What about a wee dribble of whiskey in that water?”

  “You were going to tell me about the suicide last week.” She watched as Tate poured herself a triple brandy then downed the lot in one.

  “My God, that’s better. Are you sure I can’t tempt you?”

  Ingrid shook her head.

  “Please yourself.” Tate pushed past her, bottle in hand, and disappeared into another room off the hallway. She hollered, “Well, come on, then.”

  Ingrid hurried into the room, scanning it quickly, taking in the artful decor and antique pieces of furniture. Angela Tate might be an alcoholic old hack, she thought, but the woman certainly had taste. The journalist was standing over an old oak table in the corner of the room, busily rearranging photographs and sheets of paper that covered most of its surface.

  “Tuesday last week. It happened in the afternoon. I think that’s what shocked people the most—the extravagant and very public nature of it. You expect people to have suicidal thoughts in the early hours, don’t you? Not on a bright spring day. Sun shining, birds singing.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “Young. Canadian. Studying fine art. Loriners has something of a reputation for the arts. Places are highly sought after. She was only twenty years old. Quite a talent by all accounts.”

  “How did she die?” Ingrid would have to ask McKittrick for the official report; the graphic version Mohammed had given her wasn’t exactly illuminating.

  “Top floor of the admin block. It was a miracle she didn’t hit anyone on the way down.”

  “Did she have mental health problems? Was there a note?”

  “No and no. According to her friends at college and the ones back home in Montreal, she could sometimes display an ‘artistic temperament,’ but any depressive episode lasted no longer than a day.”

  “Maybe she was going through one when she jumped.”

  Tate refilled her glass and took an unhealthy slug. “It’s possible, but there’s something not quite right about the whole thing. People at the scene said they thought she was drunk. Properly off her face drunk. Yet no one I’ve spoken to since can even remember seeing her so much as take a sip of the hard stuff.”

  Ingrid wasn’t sure the Canadian student’s death was relevant to Lauren Shelbourne’s death unless it demonstrated criminal neglect of students’ welfare by the university hierarchy. If it did, then it was something Lauren’s parents might want to take action over. “Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything unusual you’ve discovered about Loriners?”

  “I’ve been working bloody hard on this story for weeks; I’m not just going to hand it to you on a plate.”

  “Oh, come on. You might be working on a story, but I’m investigating the violent death of a young woman.”

  “Interesting way of putting it.” Tate drained her glass and shoved it on a nearby bookshelf.

  “I don’t follow,” Ingrid said.

  “You would have said ‘murder’ if that’s what the evidence has shown. What’s the pathologist saying?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I haven’t received the report yet.”

  Tate folded her arms. “Why are you investigating Lauren Shelbourne’s death, violent or otherwise? Is that something the FBI would normally get involved in?”

  “If a US citizen dies in a foreign count
ry of something other than natural causes? Sure, we investigate.”

  “Can’t trust the local plod, is that it?”

  Plod? She meant the police. “I have full confidence in the Met.”

  “You must be the only person in London who does. Should we have called nine nine nine about the graffiti?”

  Ingrid remembered the paint-covered tissue: she forgot to give it to McKittrick. “I’ll mention it to the investigation team in the morning.”

  Tate returned her attention to the documents on her desk. “What did you make of their artwork?”

  “The symbols?”

  “Ever seen anything like it before?”

  “Have you?”

  “I asked first.”

  Ingrid’s cell buzzed in her pocket. Relieved to escape the back-and-forth with an increasingly brandy-fueled Tate, she made her excuses and took the call.

  “What is it? Has something happened?”

  “I need to speak to you. Urgently.” Madison Faber sounded scared.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Not over the phone. Face-to-face. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  12

  Despite her initial demand that Ingrid meet her right away, Madison Faber had reluctantly agreed to a rendezvous in Hyde Park early the next morning. She had been quite insistent that they not meet on campus. Ingrid had told Faber her run route, and they had decided to meet at the Serpentine Café.

  “I don’t feel safe there,” she’d whispered into the phone, her voice catching partway through.

  Ingrid slowed as she approached the café on the shore of a long lake in the middle of the park, and checked her time and distance stats on her watch. The pain in her ankle had slowed her down considerably, but it seemed to be holding up. Faber was already waiting at the entrance, puffing impatiently on a slim cigarillo.