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

by Eva Hudson

  “The man I saw had darker hair.”

  “For God’s sake, could it be him?” Radcliffe said.

  The nurse came to the door and glared at them. “How do you expect this little girl to recover with all this shouting?”

  Gurley showed her the photo too. “Is this the man you saw?”

  She stared at the picture for a few moments then said, “I barely got a glimpse of him. The general outline is right, but the man I saw was paler.”

  “I’ve got officers stopping people from leaving the building and you’re saying it might not even have been Foster?” Radcliffe shook his head. “Un-bloody-believable.”

  “You got that right.” Gurley folded the sheet and returned it to his pocket. “You should still have your officers check any thirty-something males, under six-foot tall, around one hundred sixty pounds, who try to leave the hospital.”

  “Thank you so much for telling me how to do my job. I would have been quite clueless without your invaluable input.”

  Ingrid’s phone started to chirrup quietly in her purse. She hurried down the corridor before retrieving it. “Sol, if you’re calling for an update, we’re on our way back to the embassy now.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “We’re not?”

  “Another confirmed sighting has just been reported. St Thomas’ Hospital. Emergency room. I’ll text the address just as soon as I hang up. I want you to speak to the staff there, get some kind of idea of Foster’s state of mind.”

  “Won’t the police be doing that anyway? The way things are between us and the cops at the moment, I don’t want to tread on anyone’s toes.”

  “Are they giving you a hard time?”

  “I’ve had better.”

  “Then this break might be just what you need. The doctor who called it in couldn’t get through to the incident line at the station house. Luckily for us he’s a US citizen, so rather than just giving up and trying again later, he called the embassy. Jennifer spoke to him just a little while ago.”

  Ingrid hurried back to Gurley as her phone beeped with a new text message. She grabbed his arm. “We have to leave. Right now. I’ll explain on the way.”

  One of the receptionists on the front desk of the Accident and Emergency Department led Ingrid and Gurley to a small room to one side of the main waiting area. This hospital seemed a lot older than the one they were just at. The walls were scuffed at the bottom and paint was flaking off some of the windows.

  But the smell was just the same.

  Three chairs were arranged around a desk on one side of the room. On the other side was an examining table covered in a long strip of blue paper towel, ready for the next patient. At one end of the table was a lamp attached to the wall on an extending arm. Next to that was a large round magnifying glass. Ingrid saw Gurley looking at the equipment and thought she heard him gulp.

  “I hate these places,” he said.

  The door opened and a young bearded man came in and introduced himself as Dr Daniel Obermast. “I hope I did the right thing calling the embassy.” He sat in the chair immediately in front of the desk and gestured for them to take a seat.

  “Completely,” Ingrid reassured him.

  Ingrid sat down but Gurley seemed reluctant to. Maybe he wanted to ensure he could make a fast getaway. He leaned up against a wall.

  “You saw the man we want to question with his son?” Ingrid kicked off the interview. There was no point in wasting time on social niceties.

  “I did. I’m certain it was him.”

  “When was this?”

  “Yesterday morning. Eleven-fifteen.”

  “And you treated the boy?”

  “I cleaned up his nose a little better than his dad had managed to and put two stitches into the poor little guy’s bottom lip.”

  “Did his dad tell you how he sustained those injuries?”

  “Skateboarding.”

  “You had no reason to doubt that?”

  “Not at all. I see so many cases each week. Badly scraped elbows and knees. Dislocated shoulders. And that’s just the adults!”

  “Any other treatment?”

  “I gave him a tetanus shot, as a precaution. Standard procedure.”

  “And apart from his injuries, how did the boy seem to you?”

  “Fine. I guess.”

  “He didn’t seem scared at all? Coerced in any way? He was happy being with his dad?”

  The doctor raked his fingernails through his beard and thought for a moment. “There was nothing obvious in his behavior to suggest he was here under duress.”

  “Could he have been drugged?” Gurley asked.

  “Drugged? No way. He was a little tired, I guess.”

  Gurley pushed himself from the wall and paced across the room. The doctor twisted in his chair to look at him as Gurley then leaned against the other wall.

  “Is everything OK? Have I done something wrong?”

  “Not at all.” Ingrid glanced at Gurley, who had an unmistakable scowl on is face. “What about his dad? How did he seem?”

  “Stressed, I guess.” The doctor turned back to face Ingrid. “Worried about his son. He said he’d managed to stop his son’s nose bleed, but the lip just wouldn’t quit. He seemed sorry he hadn’t brought him in sooner.”

  “So he was nervous? Maybe a little jumpy?” Gurley said.

  “Yes, but I assumed that was because he was worried about his son.” Obermast bent his head closer to Ingrid, almost conspiratorially. “Which is why I doubted myself when I saw the report on the news this morning. I don’t normally watch TV, but there’s a big screen in the waiting area. It’s there to keep the patients occupied. Sometimes they have to wait quite a long time before they get treated,” he explained.

  “You doubted yourself?”

  “The picture they showed on the news only looked a little like the guy I saw. So I talked to Margaret, on reception? She was pretty certain it was the same person. So I called. It was the presence of the boy that convinced me.”

  Something about the doctor’s account didn’t feel right to Ingrid. Why would Foster risk taking Tommy to a hospital? He must have known Carrie would get the police involved. He had to have realized by then he was a wanted man. “You said he seemed concerned,” Ingrid said.

  The doctor nodded.

  “In your medical opinion, do you think he could have been suffering from the effects of post traumatic stress disorder?”

  “I’m not expert in the field, I can’t really say…”

  “How about you give us your best professional guess?” Gurley said.

  “Well, if you’re forcing me to make an assessment…” He glanced at Gurley uncertainly.

  “Please—if you wouldn’t mind.” Ingrid wished Gurley would wipe the frown off his face and sit down. He was clearly spooking their witness.

  “If you’d asked me that yesterday, I would have said he just seemed like an anxious parent, worried about his son. Without hesitation.”

  “But now?”

  “Now I know what the man is capable of, it puts his behavior in a whole different light. Maybe he was worried about getting caught. Maybe that’s why he seemed so twitchy.”

  Gurley pushed himself from the wall and stepped toward the doctor, his eyes narrowing. But before he could say anything, there was a loud knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Obermast said quickly, clearly relieved the interruption had stopped Gurley in his tracks.

  The door opened and a nurse dressed in an old-fashioned pinafore dress hovered in the doorway. “So sorry, Daniel, I really didn’t want to disturb you, but things are getting a little hectic out there.” She threw an apologetic smile in Gurley’s direction. “We really need you back on duty.”

  “I have to go. Was there anything else?”

  “Do you think the boy is in danger?” Gurley asked.

  The doctor nodded regretfully. “I just wish I’d known about the situation at the time. No way would I have let him take tha
t child anywhere.”

  14

  On their way back to the embassy, Ingrid called Radcliffe to let him know what Obermast had told them. She had to hold her cell away from her ear during his rant about agreed protocol being ‘willfully ignored’ and how she should understand it was imperative his team were kept in the loop at all times. “It’s not your bollocks on the chopping board, Agent Skyberg.”

  “We do all want the same thing here.”

  “Really? You’re not more interested in point scoring?”

  Ingrid decided it was time to do a little ranting herself. “If you think for one second that anyone is treating this as some sort of competition, then you are sorely mistaken. Feel free to make an official complaint about my conduct with the embassy.”

  Gurley raised his eyebrows and gave her a silent round of applause.

  “Dr Obermast and the other clinic staff are ready to speak to your officers, just as soon as they arrive.” A moment after she ended the call her phone rang. She glanced at the screen. It was Angela Tate, the demon journalist of Blackfriars Road. Ingrid dismissed the call.

  When they got back to the office they found Jennifer standing behind her desk as if she’d been waiting for them to arrive. “I thought we could go through Kyle Foster’s last known movements,” she said, and pointed to a pile of rolled paper tubes. “I got hold of Ordinance Survey maps of the Greater London area all the way to the M25,” she explained. “Plus satellite images of the same region in various resolutions.”

  “Paper maps?”

  “It’s quicker than setting up a projector and booking a conference room. Sol requested we go low-tech—he likes maps he can draw all over.”

  “Where is Sol?”

  “He said he’ll be here soon.”

  “We’re assuming Foster’s still in the area?” Gurley asked.

  “We have to start somewhere,” Jennifer said.

  Gurley started to unfold the maps, while Jennifer unrolled the satellite images.

  Once the first map had been smoothed flat on one of the unoccupied desks, Jennifer stuck bright yellow stars onto the few positive sighting locations: the laundromat in King’s Cross, the London Aquarium and London Eye on the South Bank and St Thomas’ hospital, less than half a mile away.

  “Should I add one to University College Hospital?” She looked from Gurley to Ingrid.

  “Radcliffe’s team will check the CCTV footage from inside the building and the surrounding streets,” Ingrid said. “It’s possible we’ll never know whether or not it was Kyle Foster in Molly’s room.”

  “So what do we have?” Gurley asked, walking around the desk, staring at the map.

  “After they left the hotel, Kyle and Tommy Foster walked just around the corner to Judd Street and hailed a cab heading north but got out after a few blocks at King’s Cross,” Jennifer said. “Then they went into the laundromat.”

  “Then there’s quite a gap between the laundromat and the next sighting,” Ingrid said. “It’s what… maybe three miles between King’s Cross and the South Bank?”

  The clerk nodded. “A little less, maybe.”

  “And we don’t know how they traveled there. On foot, public transport…”

  “He wouldn’t risk that, not with Tommy’s lip bleeding. Safer to get another cab,” Jennifer said.

  “But we don’t have another sighting from a taxi driver.” Gurley had started pacing up and down.

  “After the aquarium, Foster took Tommy to the hospital, so we have to assume his injury was getting worse by then. And Tommy must have sustained the injury some time between leaving the hotel and arriving at the laundromat.”

  Gurley stopped suddenly. “What the hell happened to him?”

  “Maybe Foster got angry and lashed out?” Jennifer said.

  “Or maybe Tommy had an accident,” Ingrid suggested, not wanting to dwell on the worst case scenario. “And there haven’t been any reliable sightings after Tommy got his lip stitched up at the hospital?”

  “None yet,” Jennifer said.

  “Unless it was Foster in Molly’s room earlier.” Gurley started pacing again. He interlaced his long fingers on the top of his head, flattening the blond buzz cut and somehow making himself look ten years younger.

  “It couldn’t have been Foster at the hospital,” the clerk said, still staring blank-eyed at the map. “That man was alone. If it were Foster, where was Tommy all the time he was there?” Jennifer looked up at Ingrid expectantly, as if she might actually be able to answer that question.

  “I guess there are three possible explanations,” Ingrid said, “Kyle is alive and Tommy’s dead…” She sensed Jennifer stiffen. “…They’re both alive and Kyle’s found some place safe to stash Tommy…”

  Jennifer exhaled.

  “Or they’re both dead,” Gurley said, helpfully providing scenario number three.

  Jennifer swallowed hard. “I really don’t want to believe that.”

  “I know this is difficult. Anything involving kids always is.” Ingrid had had more than enough experience in her years at the VCAC. “We need you to hang in there.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that my baby brother is only ten years old,” Jennifer said, her voice shaky. “Mom calls him her little miracle.” She sniffed. “Dad calls him his gigantic mistake—but I know he’s only kidding. If anything happened to him I don’t know what I’d do. Carrie Foster must be going through hell.” She sniffed, her eyes had started watering.

  “Hey, Jennifer, we’re relying on you to be strong for us,” Gurley said. “The best way you can help Tommy is by being right where you are and working your butt off.” He pulled a folded handkerchief from the back pocket of his pants and handed it to her. “Can you do that for us?”

  Jennifer dabbed her nose and nodded rapidly. “Of course I can.”

  Ingrid caught Gurley’s eye and mouthed ‘thank you’ at him. Maybe the gruff MP wasn’t quite as insensitive as she’d thought. “OK,” she said, and clapped her hands together. “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that both father and son are still alive. If that’s the case, Kyle would need to find some place safe for Tommy. So maybe he’s taken a cheap rental somewhere, or a room in a budget hotel. Somewhere he could pay with cash without raising suspicion.” She turned back to Jennifer. “Do we know how much cash he has on him?”

  “Whatever he had in his wallet plus £500 he withdrew from the ATM at Barclays Bank on Russell Square, near the hotel.”

  “No other traceable activity?”

  “No cell phone use, no credit cards. His bank account has now been frozen.”

  Ingrid looked at another map showing London and its surrounding counties. “Can we even assume he’d stay in the capital? Surely there’s too much police activity for him not to leave? Is he familiar with any other location in the UK?”

  “As far as we know, he’s never been out of Suffolk before,” Gurley said. “The only area of the country he really knows is within a forty mile radius of the base.”

  “I thought we might be needing this.” Jennifer unfolded another unwieldy map. This one displayed the whole of England and Wales.

  Ingrid studied the distance between central London and mid Suffolk, the location of RAF Freckenham. She was so used to checking dinky little local maps on her GPS app, it was good to get a sense of perspective and distance. Judging by the scale, the Air Force base was around fifty miles from London as the crow flies, which didn’t really help any, so Ingrid tapped the details into her trusty app to get the distance by road: seventy-two miles. “That’s an awful long way to travel undetected with a small boy when the whole nation is looking for you.”

  “It would be plain dumb for him to return to the base. What possible reason could he have?” Gurley sucked his teeth.

  “A network of people he can trust?” Ingrid suggested.

  “Not after what he did,” Gurley said.

  “I expect Radcliffe has asked the Suffolk cops to watch the train and bus stations close
to the base, but it’s worth checking, I guess.”

  “I’ll get onto it,” Jennifer said.

  Gurley returned to studying the map of England and Wales. “If he is on his own…” He lowered his voice. “And if he’s gone to ground, living off the land, we might not get any more sightings. We’ll just have to track him the old fashioned way.”

  “Which way is that?”

  “Weighing up all the possibilities, trusting your gut, and hoping like hell it doesn’t let you down.”

  “And what’s your gut telling you right now?”

  “He’s going to return to what he knows.”

  “The base?”

  “Not necessarily, but some place related.”

  Ingrid stared into Gurley’s piercing blue eyes. He obviously had a theory. Why didn’t he just come right out and tell her? She thought about it for a moment. If Foster returned to what he knew, what was it he knew better than anything else? “Airplanes,” Ingrid said, after a beat.

  A corner of Gurley’s mouth curled into something close to a smile.

  “Jennifer, we need a list of all the small airstrips within a…” Ingrid paused, looking at Gurley, “sixty mile radius of London.”

  “You can’t visit every one of them,” the clerk said.

  “We don’t intend to. You’re going to call them for us,” Gurley smiled at her. “Find out if they’ve seen anyone hanging around acting suspicious in the past twenty-four hours. If maybe any of their aircraft have been tampered with.”

  “So I should start from the center and work outwards?”

  “See,” Gurley said. “I said we couldn’t do this without you.”

  Jennifer beamed up at him then set to work.

  Gurley strode to the door.

  “You’re not staying?” Jennifer’s disappointment was obvious.

  “I need to get a tracker survival pack together. Want me to get one for you too?” he asked Ingrid.

  “This isn’t the wilds of Wyoming. You can’t go too far in this country without passing a McDonald’s or a Domino’s Pizza.”

  “Please yourself. Don’t come running to me when you don’t have a ground sheet or a bed roll.”