by Eva Hudson
“Not Russian, then?”
“No. Was tried for murder in 2007, but acquitted, which is why he wasn’t flagged up at the border.”
“How long’s he been in the UK?”
The lights turned green, and Ingrid continued to inch her way back to Mayfair through the streets of South London.
“Not long.” Ingrid could hear Cath tapping away at a keyboard. “He arrived at Gatwick on an EasyJet flight from Athens on the twenty-fifth of October, so what’s that? Eight days ago?”
“Seven.”
“Right. Anyway, DI Faulkner wondered if you’d like to sit in on the interview? I mean, if you can spare the time. We’ve got another twenty hours before we have to charge him.”
Ingrid was a little confused. “Not sure I can help. I don’t speak his language.”
“Yeah, but if he’s been hired by Rybkin, he might just drop a name that won’t mean anything to us but will ring alarm bells for you. Can you make it?”
Ingrid looked at the clock. Twelve nineteen. She had eleven minutes to get back to Natalya’s apartment. “What time?”
“We’re going to bring him up from the cells at two. Can you be there?”
Ingrid swerved around a wobbling cyclist as she accelerated on to Lambeth Bridge and over the Thames. “I’ll do my best, but don’t wait for me.”
“Thanks, mate.”
Before the screen went black, a Tinder notification popped up. Ingrid negotiated the junction, turned left to follow the river, then tapped her screen to see who it was from.
A sudden thud made her look up. A cyclist was shaking his fist at her. She couldn’t hear him through the soundproof glass but mouthed she was sorry. He probably thought she was some overprivileged Chelsea type late for a lunch date. She had veered into the cycle lane and almost pushed him over. Ingrid burned with adrenalin, checked her mirrors then drove carefully to the next junction. At the next set of lights, she saw the notification was from Tim, the architect with a Kawasaki and a passion for Japanese food. She beamed.
You free tonight? This might be a bit left field, but I’ve got two tickets to a thing at the BFI. Would you like to come?
Ingrid’s skin danced with excitement. The lights up ahead turned amber. She had to reply quickly.
I love things!
She threw the phone down on the passenger seat and drove off before the shame hit her. Did I just say that? Really? That I love things? She squirmed with embarrassment.
Eight minutes later, still blushing, she steered the Range Rover into the basement parking lot of Cadogan Mansions. She was in such a rush to get to her apartment she almost forgot to delete ‘Ramsgate’ from the satnav history.
20
It was two thirty, and there was no sign of the courier delivering the Maleviches. But this was London: the traffic was lousy and messengers were always late. However, this wasn’t a Deliveroo order. This was twenty million dollars’ worth of art being transported by a specialist shipping company. Plenty of people in the art world would rather send a masterpiece in the regular mail or transport it in a cab: they believed using a specialist shipping firm made their precious purchase a target for thieves, likening it to celebrities who walk the streets unnoticed without a security detail or an entourage. She stood at the window, staring down at the street, with Natalya’s iPhone clamped to her ear.
“No, it has always been in private collections,” she said to the buyer for Shevchenko’s Gauguin. He was stalling on the payment. “But it was lent to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Nice for a retrospective in 1987.”
She scanned the road, hoping for her delivery van to swing into view.
“Yes, it comes with full authenticity… Yes, from the Wildenstein Institute.”
A black London cab pulled up outside her building, and a gray-haired man in an expensive suit emerged and paid. When someone pays after they’ve got out, that meant they were a Londoner. Visitors always paid before leaving the taxi. She watched him climb the steps until the porch shielded him from her view. He was just another of those anonymous, effortlessly wealthy people that London had a surplus of. People who wore thousand-pound shoes and ate out every night. She decided he must be visiting his mistress, though she would never find out, as it was protocol not to speak to anyone in the building.
She left the window and picked up the forgery of Les Prêteurs d’Argent she’d collected in Ramsgate. Flossie Reynolds was the best in the business. It wasn’t a large painting—approximately two feet by three—but Picasso, and Flossie’s, use of color was so exciting, so thrilling. It teased covetousness out of anyone who could afford it.
“Well, you know, cash is problematic. It incurs its own costs, but yes, yes, of course I can arrange for you to pay in cash… Yes, the price would still be twenty million dollars.”
The forgery was Ingrid’s idea. The whole plan already had the potential to end all their careers, and she wanted to avoid taking a two-hundred-million-dollar painting to meetings with underworld players in locations beyond the reach of CCTV. A really good forgery meant the real Picasso could stay in the embassy’s vaults.
What she really wanted was another way to get Rybkin. She checked her watch—two thirty-five—and did the calculation. Mike Stiller would be at his desk in the DC office. Ingrid and Mike—and Marshall—had all trained together at Quantico, and although there had never been a whiff of anything romantic in their friendship (at least, not from her side), he would have been a much better choice of partner than Marshall Goddamn Claybourne, whom she had somehow been with for four years before coming to her senses. She ended the call with the buyer, switched to her own phone, and called Mike in the hope he might provide another route to Rybkin.
“Well, as I live and breathe,” he said by way of greeting. “Agent Skyberg.”
“Hey, Mike, I miss you.” She returned to her sentry duty at the window.
“I know you’re lying, but I like to hear it anyway. Isn’t it about time you came home?”
DC wasn’t home—Minnesota was—but the nation’s capital was somewhere Ingrid assumed she’d return to at some point in her career. “Might be there sooner than you think.”
“Oh yeah?” He sounded genuinely pleased.
“Yep. The powers that be have got me setting up something that will either get me a special commendation… or it’ll blow up spectacularly and I’ll get twenty minutes’ warning before I have to leave the country.” She paused. “Guess which outcome is more likely.”
“Hey, we’re just pawns, deployed to cover our bosses’ asses. You know how it works. What can I do you for?”
“You heard of Igor Rybkin?”
“Nope.”
“Russian billionaire. Disappeared a couple of years ago. Missed out on buying a Picasso at auction and hasn’t been seen since.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I do remember. Read a profile on him in Vanity Fair.”
“You read Vanity Fair?”
“My medical insurance pays for me to sit in very nice waiting rooms.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“All routine. So, this Russkie?”
Ingrid craned her neck to see the end of the road. An Ocado truck turned into her street and parked opposite. She watched distractedly as the driver unpacked someone’s weekly groceries.
“You worked in profiling for a while, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Nice to know someone remembers.”
“I’m wondering if you can give me some insight on why this guy would stay hidden.”
There was a delay before he answered. “Just googled him. You sure he’s not dead?”
“I used to think he’d quietly thrown himself overboard—”
“Friday.”
“Sorry?”
“The name of his boat. Looking at some amazing photos of it right now. Is that a putting green?”
“He’s got an entire hole.”
“A whole hole, eh?”
Mike’s humor had always been deb
atable.
“Anyways, now I’m thinking he might still be on it, cruising around the world forever. Thing is, Mike, why would someone do that? After a month or two, certainly after a year or two, it just becomes the planet’s best prison, doesn’t it?”
“Okay,” he said, sounding serious. “Tell me everything you’ve got on him.”
Ingrid reeled off the facts that immediately came to mind. His time as a local government clerk before working for Shevchenko’s Fisneft before making his own fortune.
“What about his private life?” Stiller asked.
She told him about Rybkin’s reasonably stable marriage—for a billionaire—to Yelena, his children from previous relationships and his love of buying Picassos, and how much the humiliation of losing out at a public auction for Les Prêteurs d’Argent must have hurt. A painting that his bitter rival now owned.
“Does Rybkin know Shevchenko bought the painting?”
“Can’t be sure, though we can be certain Shevchenko will have tried to rub his nose in it.”
“What kind of shape are his finances in?”
Ingrid thought about it for a second. “Well, he might not have had the money for the Picasso, but until her death a couple of weeks ago, his wife was drawing five hundred thousand dollars a month from his accounts.”
“So he ain’t completely broke, then.”
The old friends fell silent for a moment. Ingrid observed two nannies dragging their charges along the sidewalk.
“Got a hunch?” she asked.
Mike took a minute before responding. “What’s he done to piss Putin off?”
“Good question. Publicly, nothing, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something we don’t know about. Thing is, if Putin wants to put someone in their place, he does it in a way that means we’ll find out. He doesn’t have to own up to Litvinenko because everyone knows the Russian state is the only credible supplier of polonium. He wants people to know it’s him so they’re scared of him.”
“You’re right. As usual.”
“And if Rybkin was the victim of a random accident, his watch would have been pawned or his cards would have been used. Talking of which, they have been a few times.” She told Mike about the handful of ATM withdrawals in the past two years. They both agreed it wasn’t the spending pattern of a thief extracting as much cash as possible before the card was stopped by its rightful owner. “So what do you think, oh mighty profiler?”
“I loves me a little flattery.” Mike really did. Ingrid sometimes wondered if she was the only person who ever said anything nice to him because he was a sucker for even the tiniest of compliments. “Broadly, I think you’re right to focus on the psychology of why he might want to disappear, because with that kind of wealth, you can make anything happen so long as it doesn’t involve hiding out on the moon, though Branson and Musk are making headway in that direction. You gotta remember, most of the guys I was profiling were criminals, so my insights might not be that relevant because he’s not trying to evade the law. My hunch is that he’s biding his time. He was humiliated after the Picasso thing, and now he’s lying low until he can announce something triumphant.”
Something like he’s bought American democracy? Ingrid wondered.
“Maybe a big new deal or a flying car or, you know, something that shows the world he’s bigger than a whacky painting nobody understands.”
“Picasso is a bit better than whacky.”
“In your opinion. Of course, another option is he’s ill and he’s in a Swiss clinic having treatment.”
“Or fat. I wonder if he’s just got so fat he can’t fit through the door.”
“You always did notice people’s size.”
That’s because I was called Ingrid Fatberg at school. There’s a reason I run five miles a day.
“Then I thought he might have had gender reassignment surgery,” Ingrid said. “Is he wandering around the streets of London or New York or Cannes dressed as a woman?”
“Very Caitlyn Jenner. It’s a possibility, but I honestly think his humiliation is the motivator. He won’t show his face until he can show the world he’s a bigger success than Shevchenko or Putin or that guy who can’t stop buying sports teams.”
“That’s one of the sheiks.”
“Yeah, well, you get my point. Basically, the moment he becomes the world’s first Bitcoin billionaire, or has brought the woolly mammoth back to life, he’ll surface.”
The audio cut out momentarily as a message came through.
“I like the idea he’s secretly building a real Jurassic Park.”
“Hey, you gotta pity these billionaires; it’s becoming harder and harder to make your mark.”
He had a point. They said their goodbyes, promised to talk more often about something that wasn’t work—as they always did—and Ingrid returned to her agitated vigil. If her shippers had lost the Maleviches, she wasn’t sure if the Bureau’s insurance would cover it.
She checked her phone. The message wasn’t from Tim making a joke about things. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or not. It was a confirmation code from Arachnatopia.net authorizing her to use their spider forums. She immediately logged on in the hope someone would know something about how you obtained a pair of brown recluse spiders in northern Europe.
Her intercom rang. She’d gotten so immersed in spider research—there’s a reason why they call it the web—she’d somehow forgotten about her delivery.
Signing the paperwork took almost fifteen minutes, and by the time she had arranged for the embassy security team to come and collect the paintings, she wasn’t even sure if it was worth going to the police station. She set about the now familiar transformation and slipped out of the heels, peeled off the gel nails and the eyelashes, then removed the makeup before hanging up the Donna Karan dress and jumping in the shower. Barely five minutes later, she had leathered up and was about to head out the door when she looked at the Maleviches side by side with Flossie’s forged Picasso.
“Oh,” she said out loud. She’d just worked out how to get the real Picasso onto the fourth floor of his home without Shevchenko noticing. And Jones had promised if she could get it to the fourth floor, then he would get it out of the house.
“Maybe this is going to work after all.”
21
The Range Rover had already been collected by the time Ingrid straddled her Triumph Thunderbird. She kick-started the beast into life and seven minutes later she parked up outside Belgravia Police Station, a functional eighties-era slab of building that exuded all the charm of a tax assessment. Ingrid texted Cath to check Leopold Novotny was not inside.
‘Coast’s clear,’ came the response, and by the time Ingrid got to the front of the line at the reception desk to ask for her, Cath had already come down to greet her.
“How’s it going?” Ingrid asked while Cath swiped them both through the security doors. “He talking?”
“A bit, yeah.” She guided Ingrid down a side corridor. “Interview rooms are down here.”
“I have been here before.”
“Course you have. Sorry.”
They passed a noticeboard with a poster reminding everyone to contribute to a joint wedding present for Ralph. She didn’t even know the name of the woman her ex was marrying, or how they’d met or how long they’d been together.
“So,” Cath said, holding open a door for Ingrid, “I got something you might be interested to hear.”
They entered an enclosed, airless corridor with a series of doors down each side leading to the interview suites. It was unnervingly quiet. The phone vibrated in Ingrid’s right pocket, and the possibility it might be a Tinder notification gave her a thrill. Catching her reflection in a glazed door, she ran her fingers through her still damp hair: her current appearance wouldn’t get many swipes. She attempted to correct the damage done by her helmet ahead of meeting Cath’s colleagues.
“I’m all ears.”
Cath smiled. “I spoke to Igor Rybkin’s broth
er earlier today. Aleks.”
“Ooh, good work.”
“Thank you. Lives in Berlin, big shot in telecoms apparently, seemed happy to take my call.”
A tiny stab of professional jealousy stung Ingrid somewhere deep inside. Aleks Rybkin had been on her list of people to call for a while: she should have been the one to track him down. “What did he have to say?”
Cath looked over both shoulders to check they were alone, as if she was about to reveal a dark secret. “He told me he last spoke to his brother two months ago.”
Ingrid’s head swirled. “Really?” She quickly followed up with: “You believe him?”
Cath shrugged. “Said I wasn’t the first person to contact him about his brother, but told me what he said he tells everyone. No, he won’t pass on a message; no, he doesn’t know where he is; and no, he can’t tell me any more except that his brother has chosen not to be contactable. ‘The public eye did not suit him,’ was what he said.”
Ingrid leaned against the wall. “You’re sure?”
Another shrug. “I can’t verify what he says, can I, but my instinct is to believe him. Shall we go in?”
“Sure.”
Cath reached for the handle. “Oh, and one more thing.”
Ingrid raised her eyebrows.
“We’ve got company.” Cath opened the door to a small air-conditioned booth with two TV screens and an assortment of other audio-visual equipment.
“This is Billie, our technician,” she said quietly.
Billie, a slender young woman with piercings and fierce eye makeup, waved briefly.
“And this is Manish, or DS Manish Argawal to give him his due.”
“We met before?” he said. He had the appearance of a drummer in a grunge band.
“No, I don’t think so.” Ingrid extended her hand. “I’m Ingrid.”
“From the FBI,” Cath added, just in case they thought she had come to deliver chicken chow mein. “And this is Jim Beckford. SO15.”
