by Eva Hudson
“We do that too. Just not every day.”
“So why is the FBI interested in my dead father?”
“As I mentioned when we spoke, I can’t go into details, but I’m re-investigating a case that, if your father was alive, I believe he may have had information that would have been useful.”
“To do with the far right?” Daisy pressed her lips together. “Not what I was expecting.”
Ingrid furrowed her brow. “Why did you think I was coming?”
“I thought you were going to tell me who killed him.”
“Your father was murdered?”
“Ever since you called, I’ve been thinking that he might have been.”
“Because the FBI investigates serial killers?”
Daisy shook her head. “Well, maybe. But.” She pushed her chair back and stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
Ingrid sat back and listened to the breeze in the distant trees and the low moan from a far-off tractor. Insects buzzed closer by and birds serenaded each other from unseen perches. Daisy’s footsteps clattered onto the stone slabs behind her. Ingrid turned to see that Daisy was holding a business card. She held it out for Ingrid.
At first Ingrid thought Daisy was handing her back her own card. US Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation. It had the embassy’s Grosvenor Square address. But the name on the card was Dennis Mulroony.
“Do you know him?”
Ingrid was so shocked she couldn’t speak. She hadn’t heard Mulroony’s name for years. “Um. No. He was my predecessor,” she managed. Ingrid looked up at Daisy’s concerned face. “Where did you get this?”
“The coroner. When my father’s things were returned after the inquest. It was in his jacket pocket the day he died.”
9
The sense of foreboding grew the closer Ingrid got back to the city. When her Ducati rounded a bend on the three-lane freeway and the skyscrapers of Docklands came into view, she almost considered turning around and heading back out to the undulating folds of Suffolk. When Jones’s trial was over, when Zeke had found his feet, she promised herself a vacation. Hiking in the Dolomites, or renting a Vespa in Agrigento. No phone, no email, just the lure of the horizon and the warmth of adventure in her legs. She had never been very good at taking time off, but her afternoon on the farm had made her realize she was in desperate need of some R and R.
A rider on a Honda CBR pulled alongside her, and nodded. He was asking her for a race. On her old bike, a beautiful retro-styled Triumph, Ingrid got nods of appreciation. Now she got morons thinking they could take her for a ride down Thunder Road. When most of them saw a woman was inside the helmet, they lost their competitive streak and zoomed off into the traffic. Some, like the idiot to her right, actually tried to flirt at seventy miles an hour.
She mouthed the words fuck and off at him, but he took this as an invitation to ride even closer. Ingrid responded by slowing down and moving into the inside lane: the only way to lose an idiot like him was to make it very clear she wasn’t playing.
A slower pace was no bad thing. She wasn’t concentrating nearly hard enough on the road as her thoughts surged with the revelation that it must have been Mulroony who had taken the photos. It made sense of why she’d found the camera where she did—her desk used to be his—but why would an FBI Special Agent use a disposable camera? The only reason she had been able to come up with was that he didn’t want to leave a digital trace.
When Ingrid had first arrived in London in 2012, Mulroony’s name was like Macbeth’s in a theater, or the one without a nose in Harry Potter: cursed. She’d asked questions at first, but had been told in no uncertain terms by Sol Franklin, her SSA at the time, to park her curiosity and move on. The rumor, or maybe it was just her suspicion, was that Mulroony had been a double agent. For whatever reason, he had become the one who couldn’t be named, but whether that was out of fear, or shame, or national security concerns, Ingrid never knew.
It had bugged the hell out of her at the time. She was taking over Mulroony’s investigations but not allowed to ask questions about him. She was his replacement as the chief Met liaison, but she hadn’t even been given the right security clearance to access his files. She scoured her memory for every detail she knew about him as she rode closer and closer to London. Ingrid yanked up a recollection about a jackass of an arms dealer—Brewster something, or something Brewster, either way it hadn’t been his real name—who’d insisted on speaking to Mulroony and refused to deal with her.
Another memory surfaced. This one was muddier. Walking round Grosvenor Square waiting for her cell to ring. Why had she been in the square? Ah, that was it. She had called Marshall—they had still been engaged at the time—who was working in DC. She’d asked him if he could find anything out about the mysterious Mulroony, and Marshall had arranged for someone to call her. Who? Ingrid tried to dislodge the information from a crevice in her brain. She was fairly sure he hadn’t given a name. Nor had he revealed anything interesting. Only that virtually all records of Mulroony’s service had been scrubbed from the bureau’s files. Now that Marshall was dead, she would never know who her anonymous caller had been.
A truck thundered past, spewing sand and grit from its open load straight into Ingrid’s mouth. Its backdraft pulled on the Ducati, causing her to wobble. Concentrate.
The fact that the photographs had been taken by a double agent meant she was no longer thinking that the images of birds on computer screens, or collections of Post-its, or badly framed birthday celebrations, was random. Ingrid knew it sounded far-fetched, but were the photos some sort of code? Was this the sort of material a double-agent passed on to his handler? And if that was the case, were the photos a matter of national security? She needed to let DeWalt know.
Another motorcycle came alongside her. She turned her head and saw it was the same Honda CBR. He must have turned off at the next junction and looped back. What for? All to get another look at a chick on a bike? What a jerk. She kept her gaze firmly forward. She did not want to encourage him. She did not want to rile him. She definitely didn’t want to die in a pile up on the A12.
He tooted his horn.
What hell was his problem?
He honked again. This time Ingrid looked at him and raised her left arm. It was hard to give someone the finger in motorcycle gloves, but she hoped he’d get the message. He waved at her, pointed at the bike. She shook her head—no, she was not going to play with him—and slowed further, only for the car behind to blast its horn as it swerved to avoid going into the back of them.
The Honda was not backing off. She glanced down at the speedometer: they were still doing over fifty. He was playing a reckless game. Ingrid had no power of arrest in the UK. If this was the States, she’d ride him into the verge, show him her badge and scare him with threats to summon her buddies on the local force. The best thing she could do was ignore him and ride as safely as possible.
He started shouting at her, but between the road noise, the muffling effects of his helmet, and the insulating effects of hers, he was wasting his breath.
Don’t take the bait. He’ll get bored soon.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see he was still gesticulating at her. Ingrid weighed her options. She could steer closer to him and scare him off, but it was risky move in heavy traffic. She chose the other option. Ingrid checked her mirrors and reluctantly signaled before pulling onto the shoulder and out of the flow of traffic. The moment she did this, he sped off, waving at her as he steered between cars.
Furious, Ingrid came to a stop and put both feet on the ground. Her heart was pounding. Her head felt like it had swollen with rage inside her helmet. She killed the engine and kicked down the side stand.
“You absolute tosser,” she shouted, pleased at how satisfying British swear words felt in her mouth. She needed a few moments before setting off again. Riding angry was not a good recipe for maintaining four fully working limbs. Ingrid got off the bike and saw it. The s
trap of her messenger bag was hanging out the top box, drooping dangerously close to the spokes of her back wheel.
Ingrid pushed off her helmet and ran her hands through her hair. Her skin trembled. Govno. He wasn’t a tosser, was he? He had probably just saved her life. If the strap had got caught… she didn’t want to think about it. He had even looped back around to make sure she got the message. She could hear her mother’s voice: “When are you going to learn to trust people, Kroshka? Eh? Not everyone means harm to you.”
Ingrid crouched down and stared at the cars speeding past. She shivered despite the heat. In her profession you accept, while never really acknowledging, that you’re putting your life on the line. You always think about the bullet in a shoot-out, or the booby trap on an arms cache, or the pile up at the end of a high-speed chase. Now she needed to add ‘not checking a strap isn’t flapping out of your top box’ to her list of ways not to die.
She took the last ten miles easy, finally getting back to her desk after five. Zeke had already left. No note. She hoped he hadn’t had another seizure. It certainly didn’t look like he’d left in a rush. His desk was meticulously clean. In fact, there wasn’t any sign that he’d actually used it all day. But a copy of the Evening News from April 2012 that he’d left on her desk was evidence that he had done a useful day’s work.
Ingrid turned on her computer then stared out of the window at Grosvenor Square while it creaked into life. After-work picnickers vied for space with military fitness classes and canoodling couples. She remembered again the mysterious phone call she’d received from a contact of Marshall’s about Mulroony and strained to recall anything more. The guy had had an accent of some sort. Boston, maybe. She had a thought: how many agents from Boston would have worked at headquarters in the summer of 2012? She sighed. If it were an official investigation, then the resources would be found. But this wasn’t even an investigation at all.
She logged on and immediately pulled up Court TV. Jones was still in the dock, his second day of testimony. She sneered at him. Just be a goddamn man and take responsibility. She pictured Kathleen Avery watching the trial and how much pain his performance was causing her. She’d been ill for a long time and Ingrid feared Svetlana was right. The stress of the trial might be too much for an already broken heart that had to keep an eight-hundred-pound body alive.
Ingrid logged into the system and searched for Mulroony. It wasn’t a surprise to find there wasn’t any trace of him. Next, she accessed DoJ records: if Mulroony had been arrested in 2012, surely his trial would be on the system? It was five years ago, after all.
Okay, she reasoned. If he was a double agent, if he was a spy, then maybe he was tried in secret. That would explain why the Department of Justice had nothing logged for his trial. She tried a Google search and found a few college basketball team sheets and an obituary for a John Dennis Mulroony. It was a more common name than she would have imagined. She needed a way of whittling down the numbers.
She wrinkled her nose. It might work.
On the inside of her locker door was a ripped and faded sticker for the Cleveland Browns. Maybe the locker used to be his? She added ‘Cleveland’ to her search and the first return was a news report about Dennis Mulroony Snr who had donated his kidney to a co-worker at the high school where he taught. She clicked on the link and saw the smiling faces of two men with their arms round each other, outside a high school building in bright sunshine, above a caption that read ‘Donor and recipient start new semester with smiles’. Mulroony Snr was beaming, his exuberant face almost bisected by a thin, hooked nose. Ingrid did the math and reckoned there was a good chance the all-American man she was looking at was the father of a Russian spy. She could only imagine how much his son’s actions had hurt him.
She was about to search for something else, but stopped. She had the sense there was something she had forgotten to do. And then she remembered. The bird! The photo of the bird! She pushed her chair back and practically ran over to the photocopier. She lifted the lid and exhaled hard when she saw the photo of the bird was still there. Her heart pounding, she pressed the copy button and stared at the printout as it was delivered into the paper tray. It really was such a dull looking bird. Like a big sparrow. Brown and lacking any distinctive feature. Why on earth had Mulroony photographed it? She picked a pen out of her holder and wrote a message under the image.
Does anyone know what type of bird this is?
Ingrid stepped out into the bullpen. It was quieter than normal for the time of day, something she attributed to the weather. She pinned her sheet of paper on the bulletin board below a framed photograph of Frank Geest, the legend of an agent who’d been the London Legat in the 1990s, and who was the FBI’s director in the early 2000s when Ingrid joined the bureau. Ingrid smiled: Geest’s signature was on her certificate from Quantico.
Ingrid returned to her desk where James Jones was gesticulating silently in his muted rectangle. She was about to turn up the volume when she had an idea. Jones was going to prison, no matter what his defense said or did. Prisoners had records. Even if Mulroony’s trial had happened in camera, he would now be in a federal prison. He’d have a number. He would have to exist.
Ingrid entered her password and signed into the Federal Bureau of Prisons database.
Hmm. No record there either.
She tried a different spelling.
Still no record.
It was starting to feel like the packet of photos in her top drawer was the only tangible proof that Dennis Mulroony had ever existed. What the hell had happened to him? Did he get a bullet in the back of the head and dumped in the Atlantic? Is that what the United States government really did to traitors?
Ingrid opened the drawer and pulled out the Snappy Snaps wallet. She looked again at the case file number, the suburban house, the map of Scotland. What could these things possibly mean to a man who was betraying his country? Were they evidence of a plot against America? A plot that was thwarted only because Mulroony was arrested? She slid the photo of the bird back into the packet and closed the drawer.
Then she opened it again.
What if this plot was still operational?
10
“Mom, stop. Slow down. You’re not making sense.”
“That is because you don’t listen to me.”
Ingrid rolled her eyes to the ceiling. Svetlana was impossible. “Mom, I am listening. I have been listening to you. For the past half hour.”
“So now you don’t have time for me. Now? Now is when you turn your back on me?”
Jesus! “Mom, I’m at work. My assistant hasn’t come in. I have over a hundred cases. I can’t watch the trial the whole time.” In the corner of her screen, muted, a reporter was standing outside the courthouse, trying to find new ways to say the same things, only with more words.
“Kathleen needs you. I need you.”
Ingrid gripped the phone so hard her knuckles were white. “I know that. And you also know that I haven’t been called as a witness. If I had been, I would be there, but the prosecutors decided they didn’t need me.” Or want me.
“But you could say it was him.”
“Mom, I couldn’t. I’m an FBI agent. I can’t take the stand and make things up.”
“But you did see him, didn’t you?”
They had been over this at least four times. “Mom, I was fourteen, I was terrified, it was dark. It was twenty-one years ago.” Ingrid inhaled slowly. “Any defender is going to take my testimony about the man who chased Megan and me and persuade a jury they can ignore it. That’s why they’re not calling me.”
It sounded like Svetlana was crying. Svetlana never cried. “Hang on, Mom.” There was a commotion out in the bullpen, and Ingrid got up from her desk and closed the door. “I’m sorry I’m not there, but you must realize this is hard on me too. I’m the one who has flashbacks. Me and Megan on the path running so damn hard to get away from him. I’m the one that has PTSD every time I hear carnival music. It’s not
like this doesn’t affect me.”
Sometimes it felt to Ingrid that Svetlana, and maybe Kathleen too, took Ingrid leaving Minnesota as a sign that she was somehow over what had happened to her. “Another three or four yards and it could have been me.”
Svetlana unleashed a howl. “Don’t say that Kroshka. Never say that.”
“But it’s true, Mom. Isn’t it? The reason I run every day, the reason I do this job for chrissakes, it’s because of him. So please, please don’t ever say that this doesn’t matter to me.” Ingrid blinked back tears.
James Jones had told the court he had nothing to do with the first three victims, one of whom was Megan. “They was already in the basement when we put that kid from Alabama down there,” he said. The ‘we’ he was referring to was himself and a man he was calling Bill Starr. Jones’s defense was that he was just another of Starr’s victims. “I was just a hick from out of town. I didn’t know what I was gettin’ into, what I was bein’ roped into.”
According to Jones, Starr made pornography—Jones kept referring to them as ‘dirty pictures’ like they were harmless—back before digital cameras and online streaming. Not only did he make the films, he distributed them on VHS cassettes, sending them out mail order. He specialized in abusive and degrading material. Women and girls being told they were worthless as they were raped and tortured.
Ingrid had worked four years in Violent Crimes Against Children, but even she found listening to Jones’s testimony unbearable. The thought that Megan—shy, funny, sensitive Megan—could have been a part of what he described was too painful. She had watched most of it on mute. They had beaten the girls, they had mutilated and humiliated them. In Megan’s case, they had starved her, tormenting her with food, forcing her to perform degrading acts before letting her eat and then ridiculing her for her size. Jones claimed the first girl died by accident, but when Starr discovered that tape was in high demand, he had a financial incentive to carry on killing.
