by Eva Hudson
She was going to have to break into the main house.
47
Ingrid didn’t want to put the boy down on the gravel. Not without something to wrap him in. His soft sticky pink skin against the hard stones. All Ingrid’s instincts told her that was wrong. She slid out of her jacket, one arm at a time so she could keep hold of him, then repeated the maneuver to slip off her holster, dropping both items on the ground. Now she was able to hold the baby to her left-hand side and put herself between him and the kitchen door. She pulled the hammer she’d taken from the tool bench out of her waistband and tapped it against the glass.
The window shattered easily. She checked the boy: no tiny fragments sticking to his skin. Carefully, she knocked out the rest of the pane and reached in to try the lock. She found the catch but turning it did nothing: the door was probably bolted top and bottom. She was going to have to find another way in.
She looked down at the ground: with Vinny on the loose, she couldn’t leave her gun where it was. She picked it up and threw it over her shoulder like a tote bag. An unwashed newborn baby and an unregistered Glock 23: 2013’s latest accessory trends.
Ingrid came to a set of leadlight double doors that opened into an elegant drawing room. She saw her reflection in one of the panes of glass: her face wasn’t any cleaner than the baby’s. Her cotton top was so filthy it looked like she’d completed an assault course.
Making sure her body was between the baby and the glass, she hit the hammer in a short, sharp movement against the lower pane. She tapped out the remaining shards, felt around for a bolt and loosened it. It was only when she had done the same with the top bolt that she considered the noise she was making might attract Vinny’s attention.
But he’d have seen the Mercedes was gone, so he’d have left the estate by now. Wouldn’t he?
Ingrid bent forward and examined the lock. The doors opened outward, so kicking them in was not an option. Neither was the Glock: it could cause the baby irreparable hearing damage. She reached out for the handle and pressed down, testing to see if there was any give in the mechanism. Then she pulled on the handle and to her surprise the door opened. It hadn’t been locked, only bolted.
It shouldn’t be this easy. It made her feel like she was walking into a trap. She rushed inside and navigated her way to the kitchen. It was only when she reached it that it dawned on her that she hadn’t set off any alarms.
The kitchen looked like something from an interior design magazine. Shaker-style units, a farmhouse table and an Aga range. She dropped the holster onto the table and opened the refrigerator door. An entire regiment of Evian. She grabbed a bottle and turned to run, but something stopped her. Something had changed. It was the baby. He wasn’t crying.
“Hey, little one.”
Her insides turned to ice.
“Hey, you.”
She held him by his shoulders. Had he just fallen asleep? She knew nothing about babies. What was she supposed to do?
Ingrid hugged the child tightly to her chest and kissed his forehead. “Come on, little one. Come on.”
She turned on the faucet and while the large ceramic butler sink was filling she opened the first drawer she came to. Cutlery. The next one was utensils. Eventually she found one storing dish towels and laid several flat on the kitchen table.
She dipped a towel into the water and turned the faucet off with her elbow. She wiped the baby’s face and looked at his tiny chest to check he was breathing. He was, but only just. She lowered him into the basin. The instant he touched the water, he opened his mouth and his eyes. Ingrid slumped against the worktop with relief.
“There you go, little one. That’s got to feel a bit nicer.”
His dark pink arms reached up to her. Evolution, she thought. A baby reaches out for whoever is nearest. And whoever is nearest can’t help but reach back.
She wiped him over then placed him on the towels. She had done a terrible job with the umbilical cord. “In a little while, someone who actually knows what they’re doing is going to be here.”
He began to cry again, but he didn’t have the energy to make as much noise as before. He had already exhausted himself. He needed feeding.
Ingrid opened the cupboards to find they were full of Italian olive oil, pomegranate molasses, chocolate truffles and za’atar spice blends: the MasterChef winner took his cooking very seriously. But he also, Ingrid remembered, took fatherhood seriously. She thought about the nursery he had made at their house in Wapping, about the stacks of diapers and formula they had ready and waiting.
“I’m willing to bet,” Ingrid said to the baby as she wiped her own face with a damp towel, “that your daddy has made a nursery for you here too.”
She wrapped the boy in a clean dish towel and scooped him in her arms. After a few false turns, she found a grand mahogany staircase that led up to the second story. Taking the steps two at a time, she bounded past a gallery of portraits of men striking important poses, some in armor, some with dogs. Previous owners of the property she guessed. Or maybe they were props Truman had swiped from a movie set.
She reached the landing and was presented with a long corridor running in both directions, lined on either side with a succession of doors. She moved down the corridor, trying each handle as she came to it, throwing open the doors to reveal bedrooms with four-poster beds and bathrooms with brass fittings and mottled mirrors. All Arding Manor was missing was a friendly ghost. The floorboards creaked under her feet, adding authentic haunted-house sound effects.
One door opened onto a narrow staircase, presumably leading up to the servants’ accommodation. The boy was wailing now, his tiny lungs expelling a piercing sound that reverberated down the corridor. She just wanted to soothe him, to give him comfort.
She came to the final door. It opened out into a large sunny room decorated to look like an aquarium.
“Wow, take a look at this place, little fella. This has got to be your room.” It looked like Truman had enlisted the animators from Disney or Pixar to create a scene from Finding Nemo or the Little Mermaid. The boy’s cries told her he wasn’t particularly impressed. Ingrid opened a pirate’s treasure chest hoping it might be filled with formula, but it was empty.
She pulled out the drawers of a shell-encrusted credenza. “Look, diapers!” In a cupboard painted to look like the hatch of a submarine, she found enough clothes for an entire kindergarten class.
“Come on.” She was getting frustrated. The decoration was so spectacular—the crib was inside a fiberglass clam shell—that it made it harder to find what she was looking for. She stepped into a cave and was relieved to find it led toward what had to be the nanny’s room. Ingrid flung open the cupboards and almost whooped when she saw shelf upon shelf of infant formula. Closer inspection showed some of the cartons were ready-mixed and that some of them were suitable for newborns.
“When did they start making that? Guess you wouldn’t know, huh?”
She grabbed one of the cartons and scanned the instructions. The stuff didn’t even have to be heated. She found a baby bottle still wrapped in Cellophane, something she took to be a pretty good sign it was sterile.
“OK, little one. I’m just going to put you down for a second and we’re going to get you fixed. And then we’re going to go and help your mom. You OK with that?”
She placed the infant on the bare mattress on the twin bed and winced at referring to Kristyn as his mom. What was the phrase Tom had used? Gestational carrier. And then some.
She ripped open the carton of formula, spilling some on the carpet, and then carefully poured the rest into the bottle. She sat down on the bed and picked up the baby.
“Come on. I know this isn’t what you want, but you need it. You’re kind of tiny and we’ve got to build you up.”
His lips clamped around the rubber teat and he instantly stopped crying.
“That’s better.” She looked down at him, his eyes a deep ocean blue, and couldn’t quite believe what she was doi
ng. If my mother could see me now. She sat there for a few moments, then started to wonder how long had it been since she’d spoken to Angelis. Twenty minutes? Fifteen? She looked down at the boy: it had been a lifetime. Ingrid had no idea how much she should let him drink. His stomach couldn’t be much bigger than a peanut: he had probably had enough. She pulled the bottle away from his lips and was relieved when he didn’t start wailing.
Just a minute. I’ll just sit like this for a minute.
She closed her eyes but quickly opened them: Kristyn. How could she have forgotten? She needed to get back to Kristyn.
Ingrid got to her feet. She was going to have to leave the boy, but it would just be for a few minutes. She put him in the crib, tore herself away and stopped at the doorway to check if he was crying. She couldn’t hear the baby, but there was another noise. Footsteps.
Someone was upstairs.
48
There was no way whoever was upstairs didn’t know she was there: the baby’s crying and shattering window panes would have made sure of that. The way Ingrid figured it, there were two pieces of good news: the first was that whoever was upstairs was two floors away from the Glock she’d left on the kitchen table; and the second was that there was only one staircase leading to—or, more pertinently, from—the servants’ rooms. And that meant one thing: Vinny was trapped. There would never be a better opportunity to deal with him. This was the kind of situation she was trained for: one combatant, one agent, only one outcome.
She stepped out into the corridor and listened. Apart from the floorboards creaking beneath her feet, the house was as silent as a drafty manor house could be.
A thud. Then another. He was definitely up there.
Ingrid looked around for a weapon. She had to assume Vinny would have his nine-inch knife to hand, if not actually in his hand. What she needed, she told herself, was to be in a Scooby-Doo mansion where there were crossed swords above every fireplace, but the best she could find was a small granite sculpture sitting on a console table at the top of the main staircase. She hoped the piece—a twisted infinity symbol made of black polished stone—wasn’t too valuable. It reminded her of a propeller, two honed blades radiating from a central shaft. A flash of the Clue board game rippled through her head: Miss Scarlett in the library with the lead piping. She picked it up. It was much heavier than it looked. It was the perfect weapon for knocking Vinny to the floor for a third time.
She crept along the corridor toward the door that led to the secret staircase. Between the sound of her boots on the polished wooden floor and the creaking timber joists, it was impossible not to make a noise. If stealth wasn’t an option, then speed was her best bet.
She marched down the corridor, flung open the door and ran up the narrow staircase to reach a miniature version of the floor below: narrower corridor, lower ceiling, smaller doors. She looked around for something to block the staircase and prevent Vinny from escaping. There was no furniture to pull in front of the entrance to the staircase, so she settled for bunching up the threadbare rug in the hope it would trip him and send him flying.
She had a choice: left or right. She went left. Some of the doors were already open, revealing largely empty rooms. One had a few packing crates, another some free weights and a treadmill, a couple had single beds, neither of which looked slept in.
Vinny wasn’t in any of them, so she walked back toward the center, minding her feet as she navigated the bunched-up rug, and tried the doors at the other end of the corridor.
Something made her stop in her tracks. Cigarette smoke.
Ingrid stood in front of the door the smell was coming from. There were no footsteps from inside the room, no heavy breathing from the other side of the door. With any luck, he had heard her, lit a cigarette knowing it would be his last for a while and taken a seat.
She examined the door. A handle but no keyhole. That didn’t mean there wasn’t a latch lock on the other side, or a bolt, or a chair against the handle, but given the age of the door, thick with countless layers of paint, Ingrid assessed it was kick-downable.
The smell of the cigarette got stronger. That was a good sign: if one hand was holding a smoke, that meant he only had one on the knife. Even easier to disarm. Ingrid stepped to the hinge side of the door and reached across to the handle: she was going to try the gentler approach.
She could feel her pulse in her fingers as they gripped the handle and lowered it. The door moved with her touch: no latch, no bolt. She shoved hard, flinging the door against the wall. No knife-wielding maniac lunged at her. She crossed to the far side of the corridor and stared into the room. No one was visible through the doorway.
Gripping the granite sculpture in her right hand, Ingrid swallowed and crossed the threshold. Always the scariest part.
She didn’t see the man’s face. Only the gun he was holding and pointing straight at her.
49
Tom Kerrison hadn’t shaved and he was wearing the same clothes he’d been photographed in when he’d been stopped for speeding. A half-smoked cigarette hung from his lips, a bolt action Ruger carbine at his shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot, his aim wavering.
“Your son is downstairs,” Ingrid said. She moved carefully into the room, keeping eye contact with Kerrison. She placed the sculpture down on a washstand: in a game of paper-scissor-stone, a bullet usually wins.
“He’s not my son.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Honey,” he said, “a guy pretty much knows whether he’s jizzed into a yogurt pot or not.”
Ingrid pursed her lips, not sure what to make of the picture he’d just painted. “Don’t you want to see him?”
Tom shook his head, the Ruger swinging as he did so. “No, he’s Truman’s. He’s got what he wants now. He doesn’t need me.”
On the small twin bed was a packet of Blazer .38 specials and a length of rope. She looked up: there were exposed rafters. A near-empty bottle of Glenlivet and an overflowing ashtray on the bedside cabinet. Probably someplace else in the house there was a bottle of pills. Ingrid remembered Kerrison’s history: drugs, genius, alcohol, risky sex, prison, fast cars. And then there was the scar on his wrist. She finally knew who had left the bullet in the crib.
Ingrid walked very slowly around the perimeter of the small room, turning away from Tom, letting her body language tell him she wasn’t afraid or alarmed. “You’re paying Kristyn a quarter of a million bucks and you don’t even want to see the baby? I don’t get it.” She reached the window and looked out: it had a view over the yew hedge to the converted garage.
“He wasn’t due for another three weeks.” He took a hand off the barrel and ran it over the top of his head. “It wasn’t meant to happen this way.”
“How was it meant to happen, Tom?”
His hands were trembling. She wondered when he had last eaten or drunk anything other than single malt. He was a man in meltdown, on the brink, holding a loaded short-barreled rifle.
“Her and me,” he said, “we’re not so different.”
Ingrid had heard speeches like this before. They were usually delivered as a confession by someone wanting to explain the inexplicable while they still could. The Ruger would end his life as surely as it would the deer’s in the woods. Ingrid just needed to make sure he didn’t take her with him.
“I figured all the money in one go wouldn’t be good for her. She’d blow it or some guy would steal it. But over a decade… it would set her up, just like the guys who helped me with my first store. Payback, you know.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“You wanted to be her lucky break?” Ingrid kept looking out at the garage.
“Something like that.”
Ingrid turned and smiled at him. “Do you want to put that down?” One dead body on the estate was enough for one day.
He seemed unsure.
“You can still keep a hold of it, but maybe you could point it at the floor?”
Kerrison lowered the carbin
e.
“You told me you didn’t have a gun license. But then,” she paused, “I’m guessing almost everything you’ve told me has been a lie.”
He shrugged. “It’s the groundskeeper’s.”
Ingrid leaned against the wall opposite him. “I see what Kristyn’s getting out of this, but I haven’t worked out your angle. You want to keep the baby from Truman but you also want to kill yourself?”
He dropped his cigarette into the ashtray and chewed at his bottom lip. “Something like that.”
Ingrid kept her silence.
“He’d be better off without me.” Tom slumped down on his haunches. He dropped the Ruger and his head fell into his hands.
Ingrid carefully moved the gun onto the bed and went and sat next to him. Empathic body language. “Want to tell me what the plan was? Because I’m really struggling to make sense of things right now.”
Kerrison nodded and wiped away a tear. “Is he OK? The boy?”
“You could go downstairs and see for yourself.” She tried to keep any trace of accusation out of her voice. “He’s all alone right now.”
Kerrison shook his head. “No, it’s better he never knows me.”
Ingrid was confused. “But I thought… all of this… that you want him to yourself? What am I missing?”
He sighed. “It wasn’t meant to be like this.”
Ingrid looked into his red-rimmed eyes and tried to understand the pain he was in.
“I was going to get her out of here. Private plane to Milan. She was going to have the baby there, somewhere Truman would never find him. Then… then I was going to set her up in a new life, with her knowing the payments would stop if she ever went to the press.”
Ingrid put her hands on her knees. Traces of blood and mucus streaked her forearms. “Sounds like you’d worked it all out. So why are we here? Why aren’t we drinking Chianti in Tuscany?”
