by Eva Hudson
An email pinged into Ingrid’s inbox. It was from the Bureau’s forensics lab in West Virginia. ‘Please find attached the report you requested.’ Ingrid checked the time. It was three in the morning on the East Coast. Someone was working late. Or sleeping in their office. It was the analysis of the 999 call. She double-clicked the attachment, her mouth suddenly dry. The entire document was only seven lines long.
Length of recording: 19.04 seconds.
Location: internal, no engine noise detected.
Languages spoken: English and Arabic.
Voice 1: [CALL HANDLER] female, over 45. Language: English. Accent: regional English (Manchester). Emergency, which service do you require? Emergency, can you hear me?
Voice 2: [CALLER] female, under 35. Language: English. Accent: Central Asia native. Yes.
Voice 1: [CALL HANDLER] Which service do you require?
Voice 2: [CALLER] Ambulance.
Voice 1: [CALL HANDLER] Where are you calling from?
Voice 3: [BACKGROUND] male, under 35. Language: Arabic. Accent: Gulf native. Translation from Arabic: Where is he?
Ingrid found the recording and listened to the call again. Jen threw her a disapproving look that said, ‘Couldn’t you use headphones?’ The man’s voice was nothing more than a rumble. It was incredible what voice recognition software could do. She exhaled hard.
“What?” Jen asked.
“Oh.” Ingrid hadn’t realized she’d been audible. “That hit and run?”
“The one you were, like, arrested for?”
“I may have just found a witness.”
“Cool.”
It was better than that. She had two witnesses: a central Asian woman and an Arabic-speaking man. The chances that two 999 calls within an hour of each other from the same rural cell tower weren’t related was unlikely. And it was even less likely the Arabic speaker wasn’t connected to Uppenham Hall. She needed to get beyond those gates and find out what these two people knew about the hit and run. If they could confirm a man was riding, she was in the clear. Ingrid put in a liaison request to the Metropolitan Police asking for records of the cell number that had made the call.
She checked the time and stood up.
“Where are you off to?” Jen asked.
“I’ve got a case to crack.”
“You do?” Jen sounded surprised. “Normally you bombard me with, like, a zillion research requests.”
Ingrid smiled. “I gotta learn to cope without you sometime.”
Ingrid took the stairs down to the lobby, and then navigated the familiar route to the embassy’s gym, the smell of chlorine guiding her along the final corridor. Her source on the security desk had assured her Carlos Estevez would finish his work out about now.
It was a busy time of day for the gym. All the treadmills were occupied with employees surgically attached to their headphones, and the noise of fifteen motors and thirty feet hitting the rubber was loud enough to make her wish she had her own headphones. She winced at the smell. The air conditioning had never been up to the job at peak times.
Ingrid had deliberately chosen the time and place to confront Estevez. If she was right, he was behind two deaths. He had killed Matthew Harding, and his military contacts had silenced Steve Thompsett. Ensuring their encounter had plenty of witnesses lessened her chance of becoming his third victim.
She spotted Estevez easily. He was slim, muscular and very serious-looking as if considering an extremely complicated math problem. His hair was tightly cropped and his gray T-shirt clung to his firm pectorals. Compact and contained, he had the perfect build for martial arts.
Ingrid made eye contact with him in the mirror as he performed a sequence of bicep repetitions with a free weight. She was relieved he didn’t seem to recognize her. She grabbed a five-kilo dumb bell as a precaution and continued walking in his direction. He slowed his reps as she approached, then stopped when she held his gaze.
“Can I help you?” He hadn’t broken a sweat.
“I am Special Agent Ingrid Skyberg.”
His features didn’t move. He held the weight aloft, his elbow bent, showing her the motorcycle tattoo on his forearm.
“You heard of me?” Ingrid asked.
He checked over her shoulder. “Nope.”
“I work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m part of the Legal Attaché Program.”
He sucked his teeth. He didn’t like having his session interrupted.
“I’m based here in the embassy. Fifth floor, if you ever want to find me.”
He kept glancing behind her, giving the impression he had been expecting someone else.
“You should know that, this technically being American soil, I have the power of arrest in this building.” She raised an eyebrow for emphasis.
He lowered the weight. “What gives, Agent?”
She nodded in the direction of his tattoo. “You like bikes?”
His features tightened. “What of it?”
“I ride a Triumph Thunderbird.”
“Nice.”
“Blue gas tank.”
His eyelid twitched.
“Parked downstairs. Maybe you’ve noticed it?”
He stood a little straighter. “Ma’am.”
Ingrid turned. The ambassador had emerged from the changing room. Ingrid had only ever seen Frances Byrne-Williams in her tailored suits and a full face of make-up. Journalists often described the fifty-eight-year-old as ‘matronly’, but in Lycra and without the war paint she appeared lithe and friendly.
“Carlos,” the ambassador said. “Good morning.” She looked at Ingrid. “We’ve met, haven’t we?”
Ingrid felt the prickle of nerves in the tips of her fingers. “Yes, ma’am. I’m Special Agent Skyberg. I assisted your friend Truman Cooper a few years back.”
“The actor?” Estevez said.
“Oh yes, of course. He still mentions you, you know. Lovely to see you again.” Byrne-Williams turned to Estevez. “Ready when you are.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Frances Byrne-Williams raised both eyebrows. “Well?”
“Ah,” Ingrid said. “You’re training the ambassador?”
Estevez puffed out his chest.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry. I need to speak to Estevez for a moment. I have some news about a mutual friend.”
Estevez’s thick eyebrows knitted. “Maybe start on the treadmill? I’ll be right with you.”
Byrne-Williams smiled at them both and left. She turned back. “Agent? Did you get an invitation to my party? Truman and Tom are coming, and I am sure they would love to see you again.”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you. I did. Very kind to invite me.”
“Well, it’s my last hurrah, so to speak. I want to thank everyone who’s been of assistance while I’ve been in post.” She waggled her fingers, still full of rings despite the impending workout, and left them alone.
Ingrid took a step toward Estevez and leaned in. “You might want to call for a replacement.”
He eyeballed her. “Why?”
The people around them slowed their routines and gawked, sensing tension in their postures.
“You know Steve Thompsett?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Steve from the garage?”
His eyes narrowed.
“Steve who let you have a key to my bike?” She lowered her voice. “Remember him now?”
“Uh-huh. A bit.”
Ingrid studied his features. She was seeing confusion, not fear. “He was killed yesterday.”
Estevez took a step back and crossed his arms. “You’re telling me this because?”
“I think you know who killed him.”
He maintained eye contact. His face was motionless.
“Where were you on November eighteen, corporal?”
He blinked slowly. “Not a clue.”
“Corporal, I suggest you take this a little more seriously otherwise I will have to arrest you on suspicion of murder.”<
br />
His jaw tightened.
“You need to phone for a replacement to train the ambassador. And then you need to come with me.”
11
Estevez walked into the men’s changing room and Ingrid followed.
“You can’t come in here.”
She tilted her head in an ‘oh yes I can’ way but compromised. She held the door open and stood at the threshold, watching him as he pulled on track pants and a hoodie. When he was dressed, Ingrid ushered him into the empty yoga studio. The lights flickered on automatically.
“Corporal Estevez, I need to remind you that you are on American soil. You understand that means I can arrest you?”
He dropped his gym bag, its contents jangling with keys and loose change. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Let me ask you again. Where were you on November eighteen? I am an FBI agent, corporal. Lying to me would not be in your best interests.”
“I have no idea, ma’am.”
“You can call me Agent.”
“Yes m––, Agent.”
Under the harsh strip lights, Estevez appeared younger than his twenty-six years. If he were an actor, he would easily be cast as a teenager. He lifted his tee to wipe his face and revealed an impressive rack of abdominals.
Ingrid rolled back her shoulders. “Think hard, corporal. November eighteen. Less than a month ago.”
His eyes scoured the floor. “Honestly, I do not know. What’s November eighteen got to do with the guy from the garage?”
“I’ll ask the questions.”
He raised his hands in mock surrender.
“You keep a diary, corporal?”
“No.” He was struggling not to end every sentence with ‘ma’am’.
“Hand over your phone.”
He crouched down and pulled it from a side pocket of his bag. He handed it to Ingrid.
“How do you unlock this?”
He swiped a code and Ingrid searched his apps for a calendar on his surprisingly old Samsung handset. “You don’t have a diary on this? No calendar?”
He shrugged. “Nope.”
“Really? Don’t they come as standard on all phones?”
“Probably, but I need the storage for my music. I delete all that system junk.”
Ingrid clicked on the music app. He had seven hundred and forty-two albums.
“I keep that phone as it has, like, two hundred and fifty gig. New phones don’t have that kind of memory. Not that I can afford, anyway.”
Ingrid kept hold of the phone. “Okay, let’s try this another way. Why were you in Buckinghamshire last month?”
“Um.” A flicker of doubt flitted across his face. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“I don’t know where that is, and I don’t wanna lie, so…”
Ingrid was going to have to try a different tack. “When did you last ride my Triumph Thunderbird?”
He blinked rapidly. “Um, ah…”
“I know you’ve been riding it, corporal.”
His shoulders hunched a little. “I thought it was that guy’s. Steve’s. You said he died.”
“I said he was killed. Why did you think it was Steve’s bike?” One of the strip lights above their heads started to flicker.
Estevez swallowed rapidly. “He saw me admiring it—it’s a sweet ride—and said I could take it.”
“How generous of him.”
“I guess.”
“And he just let you have it?”
“No.” His forehead puckered. “He charged me fifty bucks. Fifty pounds. For a day.”
Ingrid slapped a hand against her thigh. “He was like your personal Hertz?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Jeez. “And how often did you rent it from him?”
“I dunno. Six, maybe seven times. How did he die?”
How had she never noticed? Had Steve always topped off the gas? Or fixed the odometer? “What did you use it for?”
“Day trips. Sight-seeing. Taking girls out.” He pulled a face. “Chicks dig bikes.”
“You don’t have a ride of your own?”
“Not in London, no.”
Ingrid inhaled slowly. “I’m going to ask you again. When did you last ride my bike?”
“Um, let me think.”
He was sweating more now than he had in the weight room.
“I honestly don’t know. I remember it was sunny.”
“Where did you take my bike?”
He rubbed his nose. “Listen, I don’t know England all that well. I just rode out of London for a while. Went to see some countryside. You know what it’s like. You amp up the tunes, get the bike into fifth and you look for some nice curves. You been there, right?”
She had. Going for a run sometimes gave her too much time to think, but going for a ride? That was like meditation. You’re concentrating so hard on the road you can’t think about anything else. “You head east? West?”
“I couldn’t tell ya.” Corporal Estevez moved from foot to foot, as if the floor was hot. “Listen, you said something about arresting me for murder. I’d kinda like to know the details.” Either he really was innocent, or he’d been expecting her for weeks and had been rehearsing his performance.
“On November nineteen, my bike hit and killed a man. I know damn well I wasn’t riding. And until you can tell me where you were, you are my number one suspect.”
His pupils dilated. “For real?”
“For real.”
He picked up his bag. “Then you better come with me.”
Carlos Estevez led Ingrid out of the embassy and around the corner to a house shared by the twenty-three Marines stationed in London. It was raining hard, making it feel like the temperature had dropped below zero. Neither of them wore a coat.
He fumbled for his keys then opened the polished oak door to a five-story residence that, under different ownership, would be a boutique hotel or an aristocrat’s London home.
“You live here?” Ingrid asked. “Really?”
It had to be the highest value frat house in the world. It was like something out of Downton Abbey. Dark paintings hung in gold-leaf frames on the entrance hall walls, and the balustrade on the staircase was polished mahogany. No wonder Marines wanted to work for the diplomatic protection units. In days gone by, the house would have smelled of roasted partridge and Virginia tobacco, but now the aroma came from the fallen regiment of beaten-up sneakers that lined the baseboards.
On the second floor, the drawing room was strewn with bean bags and gaming consoles. The drapes were drawn and it smelled worse than the hallway.
“In here.”
Ingrid strode over to the window to let some light in.
“Hey!” In a darkened corner, a Marine rolled over creating a rustling sound on his bean bag. “Pull the drapes.”
Ingrid yanked them open even wider.
“Who is that?” Shielding his eyes, the man peered at her. “Oh.”
Estevez cleared his throat. “She’s with me.”
“Oh,” he said again, rubbing his eyes. “You got lucky, huh Charlie?”
Estevez didn’t answer.
“Well, she’s hot.” The guy got to his feet. He was wearing boxers and a tee with a white stain down the front. Ingrid guessed she should be glad he wasn’t naked. “Though ain’t she a bit old for you?” He staggered out into the hallway without another word.
Now there was enough light in the room, Ingrid saw it was furnished with antiques and cut-glass light fittings. Two outsized televisions obscured a huge marble fireplace. Ingrid knew the ambassador’s official residence—a vast mansion within the boundaries of Regent’s Park—had been given to the US government by the Woolworth’s heiress Barbara Hutton. She wondered if this jaw-dropper of a house had also been a gift. Or an asset seized for non-payment of taxes.
Estevez stood at a long, low desk laden with several computer monitors. It resembled the check-in desk for budget backpackers. B
ehind him was a poster-sized calendar and a poster of a Miley Cyrus in a low-cut swimsuit.
“This the office?” she asked.
“The mess room.” He looked up at her. “You wanna see the schedule? I got the schedule for you.” He gestured at the screen in front of him.
Ingrid crossed the waxed wooden floor, her damp sneakers squeaking with each step. The screen filled with the multicolor patchwork of a spreadsheet.
“I’m orange,” he said, pointing at a line on the matrix, “and that’s the eighteenth.” He stood a little more upright. “I was working.”
Ingrid leaned in. “Working where?”
Estevez looked blank. “Duh. The embassy, obviously.”
“Front desk? Main gate?”
“Um.” He grabbed the mouse and clicked on the appropriate orange square. “Sixth floor. The ambassador’s suite. You could probably check the security footage.”
Ingrid turned slowly and looked at him. Had he doctored CCTV from the ambassador’s office too? He was either innocent or cunningly brazen. “Says here your shift finished at six p.m. Where d’you go after work?”
“How the heck am I supposed to remember that?” A vein pulsed visibly in his neck.
The Marine with the stained T-shirt wandered back in. “So, you’re not screwing her then?”
Ingrid pulled out her badge. “You might want to fuck off.”
“Back off, Daley,” Estevez said.
Daley looked at Ingrid’s ID. “Fucking Bureau.” He sauntered off again.
“I have an idea,” Estevez said. “Something that’ll prove where I was.”
Ingrid was intrigued.
He shut down the roster and wandered over to the TV screens. “I was probably playing a game. My username should come up in the history.” He picked up a console and switched on the TV. Ingrid didn’t follow. She was still staring at the monitor. The roster had been replaced by the computer’s screensaver. It was the US Marines’ insignia. Written below it was their motto: Semper Fidelis. Where else had she seen that recently?
