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

by Eva Hudson

  Ingrid walked past a Portuguese deli, a tapas bar and a specialist Portuguese bakery displaying custard tarts ranging in size from gem-like to gigantic. There were just too many establishments to choose from. Somehow she needed to make the connection between one of them and Manuela. Further down the highway, on the opposite side of the street, she came to Café Porto and something about it was attracting her attention. She crossed the road to take a closer look.

  It was more of a sandwich shop than a café and didn’t look like it had been remodeled since the 1960s. Its windows were covered with a film of grime, but Ingrid peered inside as best she could. She looked down and saw the morning’s mail was still on the mat: the place hadn’t opened for breakfast, and it didn’t look like it was preparing to open for lunch. That raised Ingrid’s interest: what were the owners of Café Porto doing instead? What urgent mission had taken them away from making the day’s profit?

  And then she made the connection. Stacked above the coffee machine were leaning towers of cardboard cups, all of which bore the café’s logo: a red rooster. She had seen the same cup on Manuela’s desk. Adrenaline surged through her blood. Whether the place was owned by Manuela’s relatives or she was just a regular customer, she now had a reason why Kristyn had headed for Vauxhall.

  Ingrid knocked on the door. She didn’t expect anyone to answer: the place had clearly been abandoned for something more important. Like helping a teenage runaway to disappear. She knocked again, waited, then ducked down an alley that led into a yard behind the café. Smelling of urine and barely three feet wide, it was cluttered with crates and bin bags. Ingrid stepped carefully through the obstacles and quickly found herself in what was more of a garden than a yard. Sun-bleached plastic garden furniture was strewn across an overgrown lawn that extended thirty or forty feet toward a broken fence. The next time someone told her that working for the FBI sounded glamorous, she’d tell them about this place.

  She looked up at the back of the building. Five stories high, a different kind of drape at each window, many of which were cracked and held together with tape. Weeds were sprouting from the guttering.

  Ingrid shoved her shoulder bag so it rested on her behind and planted her hands on her hips. She stood and stared at the building and slowly started shaking her head. This was a wrong turn, a bad move. She thought about how manicured, how perfect, how precise Manuela was: it seemed too unlikely that this run-down place would have a connection to Truman Cooper’s assistant. The red rooster was a red herring. She needed to leave. Just as she headed for the alleyway, a tall thick-set man emerged from it.

  “Who are you?” He was holding a meat cleaver.

  “Health and safety.”

  25

  The man was six feet tall and wearing a sports coat over a shirt. Either he hadn’t shaved for a few days or he had just trimmed his beard. The greasy hair smoothed over his head suggested it was the former. He looked like he’d slept as much as he’d washed. She’d guess he was forty, but a shave and a shower might take a decade off her estimate.

  “You don’t look like health and safety,” he said.

  “I knocked at the front.”

  “Not open today.” His accent was almost identical to Manuela’s, though the woman spoke so little it was hard to judge accurately.

  “It was a joke. I’d have a clipboard if I was coming to do an inspection,” she smiled at him, and took a step toward him. “I’m Sarah. A friend of Manuela’s.” He looked confused, but moved the cleaver to his left hand and accepted Ingrid’s offer of a handshake. “She said you could help me.”

  He nodded. “Inside.”

  He fumbled with a large bunch of keys and opened the back door to the café. No amount of training could compensate for the sensation that following a strange, grumpy man holding a meat cleaver into an empty building was a bad idea, but Ingrid nevertheless stepped inside and made her way through a maze of stacks of cardboard boxes and into the kitchen. She was trained to disconnect offenders from their weapons. She could handle it.

  The man slammed the cleaver down on the counter. He looked deliberately down at the heavy blade then slowly up at Ingrid. “Who is Manuela?”

  “You know Manuela,” Ingrid said, trying to sound friendly and casual. “Long dark hair, brown eyes, always dresses real smart?”

  He shoved his tongue between his lips and his teeth. He was suspicious of her.

  “Anyway, she said you were the one who could help me find Kristyn.” Ingrid just hoped that if she kept talking, something would come to her and he’d take his hand away from the meat cleaver.

  “I don’t have Kristyn. You have bad information.”

  “But you know where I can find her?” Ingrid’s use of the word ‘her’ seemed to throw him. “I need to find Kristyn. Or Kate-Lynn. Do you know where Kate-Lynn is?”

  He shook his head. “You have the wrong guy, wrong place.”

  “Please! It’s important. I have to find her. You have to help me.”

  The man placed his hand over the handle of the cleaver. He really wanted her to go. Ingrid looked from the blade up to his grubby, serious face. The windows rattled as an articulated truck rumbled past the window, and the ground vibrated beneath her. Or maybe it was just her knees shaking.

  “Go. I don’t have crystal.”

  Had she finally heard him right. Crystal? Is that what he’d been saying? The guy was a goddamned meth dealer?

  “What about a little,” she dabbed at her nose, “you know?” Maybe Manuela picked up a little something extra when she bought her coffee?

  His expression didn’t change. His hand was still on the meat cleaver. “Go.”

  Ingrid reached into her purse and pulled out one of her phones. She pressed a few buttons and put the Nokia on silent. “I’m gonna call Manuela,” she said. “She was sure you’d be able to help.”

  He glowered at her.

  “No, silly me. Wrong phone.” She could play dumb while acting smart. She grabbed the iPhone from her jacket pocket, dialed the Nokia then answered her own phone. “Jeez, this is confusing. I don’t have her number—”

  He picked up the cleaver and slammed it onto the counter. Ingrid flinched.

  “You go. Now.”

  “OK. I got bad information, what can I tell you.”

  He moved toward the street door, an enormous bunch of keys in his hand. While the man fiddled with the lock, she placed the Nokia behind a chair stored upside down on one of the tables. He opened the door. “You go now.”

  “You really don’t know Manuela?” Ingrid asked.

  “Go!”

  She stepped out onto the noisy sidewalk. She needed to find somewhere quieter, quick. The first door she came to was a betting shop, but she’d attract too much attention in there. She put her finger over the iPhone’s microphone and hurried down the street. The motorcycle showroom was up ahead. She ran for it.

  The dealership smelt of polish and leather, and when the double-glazed door swung shut behind her, she exhaled: it was like walking into a sound-proofed booth compared to the traffic noise outside. Ingrid clamped her phone to her ear and listened.

  Nothing. She checked the screen. The call duration was two minutes and four seconds: she was still connected to the Nokia. She hoped her improvised listening device would tell her whether or not Mr Cleaver really did have anything to do with Kristyn’s disappearance.

  “Can I help you?” said a smiling woman in her twenties.

  Ingrid raised a finger to her mouth.

  “Let me know if you need anything.”

  Ingrid nodded and walked through an archway into another part of the showroom. She found herself standing in front of a row of Triumphs, but forced herself not to look at the specifications, or the prices. She took her finger off the microphone, put it in her other ear and listened intently. Footsteps. Mr Cleaver was on the move.

  The footsteps got louder. He was moving toward the Nokia. Ingrid gulped hard. Please don’t spot it.

  �
��Still here.” He was on the phone, pacing up and down.

  Aware she was breathing deeply, Ingrid put her finger back over the microphone.

  “Crystal,” he said, then after a pause, he said it again. “She kept asking for crystal, but I tell her I don’t know what this is… What do you think?” He walked away from the Nokia, making it harder for Ingrid to hear him. “You want to go ahead?” she thought she heard him say. “I don’t think she’s cop. American. Dressed too nice, you know.” Ingrid had to smile a little. “OK,” he said, “see you at two.” Then there was a loud clatter as if he’d kicked something.

  Ingrid hung up. She’d heard enough. He wasn’t on the phone to Manuela and he wasn’t talking about a runaway. If she’d been recording the call she’d have evidence of a drug deal happening at 2pm, but that was something she was going to pretend she’d never heard. Without thinking, her hand stretched out and caressed a chrome headlight on a Thunderbird. She noticed the price tag hanging off the handlebars: £8,999. Worth every penny.

  “Thanks very much,” she said to the sales assistant and pushed open the double-glazed doors onto the forecourt. She ran back up to Café Porto and knocked on the door. The man turned, saw it was her and gesticulated she should get lost. She knocked again. He slammed a hand against the counter then reluctantly stomped over to the door. He unlocked it.

  “I cannot help you.”

  “Sorry. I think I left my phone.” She gave him one of her best smiles. “I think I put it down…” She slid past him and into the empty café. “See, here it is.” She waved the Nokia at him. “So glad I realized before I got on the Tube.”

  Before he could say anything she was back on the sidewalk. She threw the Nokia in her bag, and opened her contacts on the iPhone.

  “Hey,” McKittrick said.

  “Oh, no, that doesn’t sound good,” Ingrid said. “I hope that’s a hangover I can hear in your voice and not—”

  “No, it’s unemployment. This is what stupidity sounds like.” Ingrid didn’t know what to say. It certainly wasn’t the right moment to mention a slam-dunk tip about a drug deal. She thought she heard McKittrick sob. “Suspended. At least three months while they investigate further. No third umpire. No review. I’m out and back in the pavilion. Or rather the pub.”

  Was that a cricketing metaphor? Ingrid carried on down the street looking for other Portuguese businesses. She stopped at a set of traffic lights and waited to cross. “Who’s with you?”

  “My good friend vodka and her sidekick tonic. Want to join me?”

  Ingrid didn’t answer. On the other side of the street there was a man in a White Sox shirt. His baseball cap, peak pulled over to the left, was low over his forehead. It was the man from the cordon in Islington.

  “Ingrid? Did you hear me?”

  She continued to look at the baseball fan on the other side of the street. It was definitely the same guy. What the hell was he doing here? “Natasha, I’m really sorry, I can’t. Something just came up.”

  26

  Ingrid stared at the man in the White Sox shirt on the other side of the intersection. He was built like a linebacker, well over six feet tall and the unhealthy side of two hundred and fifty pounds. The four lanes of traffic between them slowed, and one of the beautiful new double-decker Routemaster buses briefly came to a halt at the junction. It was the first time Ingrid had seen one in the flesh and she took a moment to admire its bold curves. When it pulled away, the man had gone. It was as if a magician’s cloak had swept in front of him and made him disappear.

  Ingrid pushed the hair off her forehead and stood at the traffic lights, mouth agape. Where the hell had he gone? The only option was a side road about twenty yards ahead.

  She couldn’t wait for the lights to change. She held out her right hand, palm raised, made eye contact with the driver of an oncoming car who slowed as she stepped out in front of him. She’d made it a quarter of the way across. She stood on the dashed white lines, standing between two lanes of free-flowing traffic, looking for a gap. A white van sped past, inches from her face. She spotted her chance and darted onto the traffic island in the middle of the road.

  She looked left, raised her left palm to the oncoming traffic and stepped out, daring the driver of a black Mini to run her over, and within seconds she had navigated her way to the sidewalk on the far side and safety.

  Immediately and instinctively, Ingrid started to run. She reached the turning and accelerated into the side road, lined on both sides with brick-built two-story row houses. She scanned the road ahead but couldn’t see him. Where was he? He was a big guy: there was no way he could have outrun her, and there was nowhere for him to hide either. He had to have taken a different route.

  Ingrid dashed back to the busy highway and scanned all the possible exits. There wasn’t anywhere he could have reached in the time: he had simply disappeared. Just as Ingrid was starting to think she had imagined him, she caught sight of the red double-decker bus. That’s how he’d disappeared.

  The bus was already a hundred and fifty yards down the road but the traffic was heavy and there were so many traffic lights that Ingrid rated her chances of catching it up. She started running again, the new boots only hampering her speed a little. Ahead of her, a group of women in hijabs walked four abreast, blocking the sidewalk. Ingrid pumped her arms hard and leapt onto a low concrete wall to bypass them, running at full speed for several paces before bouncing down onto the sidewalk via a wooden bench.

  The bus was pulling away from her. It would have to stop soon; all she had to do was keep it in sight. She picked up speed, her shoulder bag slamming into her hip with every stride. Up ahead, two men pushed a low-loader across the sidewalk, delivering bags of cement to a construction site. Ingrid ran straight for them.

  “Hey, watch out!” one of them shouted.

  Ingrid vaulted over their trolley.

  “Not bad,” said the other as she sped away from them. It felt good to be on the move and when the burn started to electrify her limbs she smiled: other agents could chase felons, but not many could close in on a moving vehicle.

  The bus indicated to turn left and it slowed to make the maneuver. By the time it disappeared from view, Ingrid was only sixty yards behind. She reached the corner ten seconds later, and saw a bus stop in the middle distance. She willed someone to stick out their hand and get the bus to pull over.

  She came to a building site. On one side of her were huge constructors’ fence panels, while on the other scaffold poles supported overhead workers. It meant the sidewalk narrowed to almost exactly the same width as the double buggy an exasperated mother was pushing toward her. Ingrid flung herself at a scaffold pole, using it to swing out into the road before continuing her run.

  The passengers waiting at the bus stop started to shuffle and one of them stretched out an arm to signal to the driver. Ingrid pushed hard, desperate to catch up with the bus. It indicated to pull over. She kept running hard, her lungs starting to hurt a little.

  The driver applied the brakes and opened the doors. No one got off, and only one person got on. The doors would close again in just a few seconds, but the new Routemaster buses were open at the back, allowing passengers to jump on and off between stops.

  Ingrid started waving, hoping the driver would look in his mirrors before pulling away. She accelerated, her new leather jacket rigid against her muscles, restricting her movement. She was close enough to see the driver in his wing mirror. She urged him to notice her. The doors closed. The indicator was turned on. Ingrid kept running; she was just ten yards away. Then the bus edged forward, pulling out into the road between cars. Ingrid calculated she had twenty yards before the bus would be traveling faster than she could run. Her heels pounded into the sidewalk and she pushed through her toes, her arms scissoring up and down: she was gaining. Four strides, three, two… Ingrid prepared to leap, her arms reaching out for the handrail and for a moment she was airborne. She grabbed the rail, bent her knees and brought her fee
t down on the footplate.

  A woman sitting on the rear seats, shopping bags on her knees, looked at Ingrid who was panting hard. “There’s another one right behind,” she said.

  Ingrid shoved a hand into her bag in search of her Oyster card. She leaned against the rear stairs and scanned the passengers on the lower deck. He wasn’t there. She pulled out her Oyster card and tapped it against the ticket reader, then bounded up to the top deck as the bus headed north over Vauxhall Bridge. She walked forward, aware that beads of sweat were pricking at her hairline: running in leather was a bit like running in 100 per cent humidity. From behind, she could see that no one was wearing a baseball cap. He must have taken it off. But there were only six people on the top deck, and none of them looked like an overgrown American sports fan. She kept walking toward the front, lurching as the bus took a bend too quickly, in case her assessment was wrong. She reached the front staircase and turned to look at the passengers’ faces. She had been correct: Mr White Sox wasn’t on the top deck. She slumped down onto a seat and took a minute to get her breath back.

  The bell rang and the LED display screen switched to ‘bus stopping’. Ingrid looked out of the window, not quite sure which bit of London she was now in. The bus pulled over to the curb and Ingrid tried to see a street sign to get her bearings. She couldn’t see one, and didn’t recognize any landmarks, so she got out her phone and opened Google Maps. The GPS would tell her where she was. By the time the bus started to pull away, her breathing had returned to normal. While the app loaded, she gazed out of the window: standing at the bus stop and looking decidedly lost was Mr White Sox.