Flight Risk (An Ingrid Skyberg Mystery Book 7)

by Eva Hudson

  “I do.”

  “Well, if I had a spare helmet, I’d take you for a ride.”

  The leather on the right arm of his jacket was shredded, the kind of damage you get when you come off your bike and skid for several yards.

  “I ride a Triumph,” she said, instantly regretting it.

  “Cool. Is that a Chicago accent?”

  “A Thunderbird.” She watched him closely.

  He straddled his Suzuki. “Sweet.” He gave her a big cartoonish smile. “I’ve ridden one of those.”

  You don’t say. Ingrid made deliberate eye contact. “Beautiful petrol blue.”

  His eyes widened momentarily before he plunged his key into the ignition. An unmistakably flicker of panic had brought his flirting to an end. He pressed the starter button and flipped down his visor. He nodded before riding off.

  There was a noticeable wobble as he pulled out of the parking lot.

  14

  Ingrid took a detour on the drive back into London. The GPS coordinates of the longer calls made by the unregistered phone led her to the town of Bishopsgate, about five miles west of Burnt Oak. The town’s main street had the expected mix of Indian restaurants, florists, coffee shops and dry cleaners, seemingly the only businesses immune from the march of Amazon.com.

  The satnav took her through Bishopsgate, past a train station emitting commuters returning from London, and out the far side of the town. After half a mile, the electronic voice told her that she had reached her destination. She was in a retail park with outsized versions of supermarkets, pet stores and DIY outlets. Ingrid parked and hoped to see something that would tell her why the woman from Turkmenistan visited every Thursday. She opened the compass app on her iPhone and checked the coordinates. She was a fraction of a degree out.

  Crossing the parking lot like a water diviner carrying a rod, Ingrid moved carefully among the vehicles to the precise location. She was being guided to a branch of Tesco, one of the UK’s biggest supermarket chains. It certainly made sense of the call pattern. The woman phoning Turkmenistan must do her weekly shopping on Thursday afternoons. It was Wednesday, but given she was there and someone might know something, she stepped inside the sliding doors. Glad of the warm air coming from a vent above her head, Ingrid took in the scale of the store. It was bigger than a terminal building at a decent-sized airport. A Christmas song about mistletoe and wine piped out of speakers draped with tinsel.

  There were maybe fifty checkouts, all with lines of fractious shoppers leaning on shopping carts filled with turkeys and last-minute gifts. Beyond them, aisle upon aisle sold everything from children’s clothes to flat screen TVs to out-of-season strawberries and frozen pizza. She’d read once that some retailers make half their annual profits in the month before Christmas. On the evidence in front of her, she could well believe it.

  Ingrid looked around for the customer service desk and joined the line of people with refund requests and complaints about two-for-one offers.

  “Hi,” Ingrid said when she reached the counter. “Could you point me in the direction of the manager’s office?”

  “You want to speak to the manager?” The customer service assistant wore a tight-fitting uniform, and an exasperated expression. A badge revealed his name was Rashid.

  “Yes.”

  “So does everyone else. What about?”

  Ingrid pulled a business card out of her pocket and he looked at it.

  “Yeah?” His wasn’t the normal reaction. Most Brits expressed either disbelief or excitement when she showed them she worked for the FBI.

  “I need to speak to someone about a customer of yours.”

  He gestured at the frantic Christmas activity going on behind her. “We’re kinda busy.”

  “This is important.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’ll try calling her.” He picked up a phone. “I’ll be right with you,” he said to an elderly woman standing behind Ingrid. “Soon as I can.” His head tilted to one side as he gripped the receiver between his chin and his shoulder. “That just a refund is it, madam?”

  He processed the refund, handing the older woman some cash, and then turned his attention back to Ingrid. “She’s not picking up.”

  “But she’s working? She’s in the building?”

  “No one’s got any annual leave till the middle of January.”

  Ingrid went off in search of someone more helpful, but every time she stopped a member of staff re-stocking fridges or fetching a ‘click and collect’ order from the warehouse, she got the same bemused reply: we have hundreds of customers an hour; do you really think we’d recognize a woman who comes in once a week? It’s not like Ingrid had a photograph, or a name, or a description. Her request to review their CCTV footage was met with above-my-pay-grade shrugs.

  Ingrid would make a formal application to see the surveillance recordings when she got back to the embassy. She knew the exact time the calls had been made, so it shouldn’t be too hard to find an image of a woman on a phone, even if there were twenty cameras to check. The problem with that option was that the request would have to be made via Thames Valley Police. Ingrid could just picture Detective Sergeant Hayes’s sour expression. She could almost hear her saying quietly to a constable, ‘Don’t worry if this gets lost in your in tray’.

  Her phone rang.

  “Jen. Hi.”

  “First things, are you coming back to the office this evening?”

  Ingrid browsed the racks of cheap clothing. She could use some more underwear. “Unlikely. I’m out in Buckinghamshire somewhere.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yep, I guess.”

  “Okay then. You want what I found on Estevez’s laptop?”

  “Hit me.”

  “I mean. I’m not an expert and, like, I could be wrong––”

  “Jen, it’s okay. This isn’t for the courts.” Ingrid picked up a hat and scarf set. She could also use a pair of gloves.

  “So… Before I start, I have to tell you this was very easy. Do you use Gmail?”

  “No.”

  “You sound distracted.”

  “Sorry. You have my full and undivided.” Ingrid kept her voice low. She didn’t want people overhearing.

  “Good. So, Gmail. They track everything. Like, everything, seriously. All I had to do was log into his Gmail account. And technically, I didn’t even have to do that because he’s, like, totally logged in all the time.”

  Ingrid couldn’t work out from Jen’s preamble if she had struck gold or not. She picked up a pack of socks and realized she needed a basket. “And? What have you got?”

  “Is there a specific time you want to know about?”

  “After work on the eighteenth.”

  “Because I can give you almost a minute-by-minute.”

  Jen knew how to spin out a tale. “Just give me the highlights.”

  “Jeez, there aren’t many of them. He basically watched gaming videos on YouTube, googled ‘what’s faster an eagle or a dolphin,’ and searched for pizza restaurants near Waterloo station. Oh, he also ordered a case of Budweiser from Amazon at five past seven.”

  “And what is faster?”

  “Oh, I didn’t––”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Ingrid got in a long line for the self-service checkouts. Everyone else in Bishopsgate seemed exceedingly worried about running out of mince pies. “Can you tell where he was?”

  “Yup. I can see his whole evening on a map. On a Google map.”

  “And?”

  “The furthest he got from the embassy was a pub in Shepherd’s Market, from which he checked a basketball result. So that moral of that particular tale,” Jen said. “Is to always log out of your Gmail account. Or, like, totally check out your privacy permissions.”

  Jen’s evidence was compelling, but it was the flash of fear Ingrid had seen on Marcus Williams’s face that made her sure Estevez was innocent. “Good work, Jen. Thank you.”

  “Shall I send his phone off to the
lab? You know, for like actual professional analysis?”

  “Not necessary.” Ingrid was nowhere near the front of the line and the Christmas music was getting under her skin.

  “Anything else?” Jen asked.

  “Um.” The jingling bells were burrowing into her brain, interfering with her synapses as effectively as a drug in a laboratory experiment.

  “You sure you’re okay, Ingrid. You sound, like, underpowered.”

  “I’m at the checkout in Tesco,” Ingrid said.

  “Ooh. Glamor.”

  “Actually…”

  “Yes?”

  “I put in an ANPR request two days ago. Could you chase it for me?”

  “Sure thing. They normally come back quickly, don’t they?”

  They did. And it was worrying that it was taking so long.

  15

  Ingrid decided to pay Uppenham Hall a visit while she was still in Buckinghamshire. She navigated her way to Greenacre Lane and found the unmarked turnoff to the property. Several days of rain meant the Toyota Prius struggled for traction on the dirt track.

  The air was thick with a constant drizzle. Laden cumulonimbus clouds loomed over the landscape, making late afternoon feel like the middle of night, especially so far from any street lighting. Ingrid slowed down and wiped the condensation off the window. She scanned the dash for the defogger. Beyond the hedgerows enclosing the track, the flashlight of a security patrol bounced through the branches. A dog barked as she drove past.

  The lane was shrouded in dense shrubbery, but gaps where trees had died revealed a fence topped with razor wire. She made it to the muddy turnaround in front of the iron gates she’d seen on her first visit. She killed the engine, buzzed down the window and listened. A bitter wind through the leaves drowned out every other sound.

  It seemed unlikely this was the main entrance. If Uppenham Hall was as grand as its Wikipedia entry suggested, this had to be the tradesmen’s gate. She turned the key and carried on down the track. It had to lead somewhere.

  The land on the other side of the track from Uppenham was just fields. She couldn’t see any other sources of light, or evidence of occupation. Her headlights glinted off a puddle and Ingrid slowed to navigate it. When she accelerated again, the wheels spun in the mud. She put the car into reverse and the wheels spun again.

  Something inside her wilted. Please, no.

  Ingrid had grown up on a farm. She’d been stuck in mud many times in her life and she knew that, without a 4x4, continuing to go forward was a mistake. She also knew that pushing the car out of the rut on her own was going to be impossible. Her intestines twisted into a fist. Sweat beaded the top of her lip.

  More in desperation than expectation, she revved again. However, without traction, the car wasn’t going to move. She slammed a palm into the steering wheel and killed the engine. She reflexively looked up at the clouds, hoping for a little divine intervention. At least it wasn’t raining. She got out, her sneakers instantly consumed by the mud. It oozed inside her sock. It was just as well she’d bought a fresh pair in Tesco.

  Ingrid leaned against the hood, planted her feet deep into the mud, and pushed. The car rocked backward, then forward. She breathed deep, leaned in again and pushed harder, her feet slipping as she did so.

  “Govno!” In moments of stress, Ingrid still swore in Russian. Through the windshield, a rectangle illuminated on the passenger seat. She had an incoming call. She yanked her feet out of the mud, opened the door and reached in for the phone.

  “Ingrid Skyberg.”

  “Ingrid, hey girl.”

  “Hi Lexi.”

  “Everything okay? You sound terrible.”

  “I’m kind of in the middle of… a situation.”

  “Intriguing. Listen. I just had a call from our friends at Thames Valley Police. They want to interview you again.”

  “Okay.” A faint alarm bell started ringing.

  “They’ve gotten the forensics back on the motorcycle.” Lexi’s voice was measured and calm, but the alarm bell got louder.

  “Forensics never come back that quickly.” The darkened trees seemed to close in over her. “I mean, never. They take weeks.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Don’t you think it’s odd?” Several rain drops splashed down on the windshield. Just what she needed.

  “Isn’t it good news? Looks to me like they want to get this over and done with.”

  Ingrid’s breathing quickened.

  “Nine o’clock in the morning. Tomorrow.”

  Ingrid didn’t know how to respond. This was not how investigations played out.

  “You wanna ride out together?” Lexi asked. “They want us at the station house in a place called… Bishopsgate.”

  Ingrid clasped her scalp. “No. It’s okay. I’ll meet you there.”

  She ended the call, dropped the phone on the seat and shut the door. She slumped over the roof of the car and let out a groan. Her jaw trembled, but not with the cold. Too much about this investigation wasn’t adding up. The doctored CCTV. The ANPR not coming back while the forensics were miraculously fast tracked. The groan became a moan as rage bubbled up from her belly and exploded through her system.

  Matthew Harding’s death wasn’t just a hit and run, was it? She was being drawn into something she did not understand. Something so dark that Steve had been killed to protect it. She pictured Steve’s falling body, and the terror on his face when he’d seen the man in the Audi. He had known what was coming.

  The rain started to fall more heavily.

  “Oh, great. Just great.”

  Rain would make it harder to shift the car, and she did not want the security patrol to find her. She braced herself against the hood, forcing her sneakers deeper into the mud. Her hands slipped on the wet metal. She wiped them on her jacket and gripped the radiator grille. She pressed her feet down and shoved hard. The car moved, but rolled backward. Ingrid let out a howl, then pushed again, this time driving all her fury up from her heels, right through her back and piling down through her shoulders. She kept pushing and forced the tires out of their rut. The Prius rolled backward and relief erupted out of her body. Her muscles burned like coals but she didn’t feel any pain, only elation. She rested against the hood for a moment to get her breath and looked up between the trees. She let the rain cool her hot cheeks.

  Ingrid needed to get out of there before the track softened any further. She scraped the mud off her sneakers on the foot plate and got in behind the wheel. She put the Prius in reverse and started making her way back to Greenacre Lane.

  Her neck ached from the strain. Reversing a strange car on a dark track with the threat of imminent discovery should be on a course at Quantico, she thought. Her heart pounded against the inside of her shirt.

  She reached the turnaround outside the gate and performed a three-point turn. Ingrid rounded her shoulders to release the tension and exhaled. The relief was short-lived. A beam of light swung toward her from inside Uppenham’s grounds. It wasn’t a guard on patrol, it was headlights. Not wanting to get caught on the track, Ingrid reversed up a few yards, killed her motor and turned off her lights. Her options were hide or run, and she didn’t like her chances outpacing a 4x4.

  She had an oblique view of the gates and followed the swoop of the headlights as the vehicle neared. Her mouth was dust-dry. She swallowed. She could hear its motor now. Diesel. Breathless, she watched the headlights slice through the iron gates, which opened to release a small van.

  Ingrid’s jaw tightened.

  The van turned toward Greenacre Lane. To Ingrid’s immense relief, it didn’t belong to a private security company. It was emblazoned with the logo of a company: Mayfair Events––Boutique Party Planners.

  After a few minutes, Ingrid switched on the engine and put the Prius into gear.

  16

  Ingrid scoped out the main entrance to Uppenham Hall. On the other side of the estate, and accessed from a road running parallel to Greenacre Lane, it
was much more impressive than the tradesmen’s access. A stone gatehouse sat behind a pair of ornate wrought-iron gates through which Ingrid spotted an automatic roadblock. There was no obvious vantage point to surveil the entrance covertly. Given the chances of intercepting the Turkic woman or Arabic speaking man were somewhere between zilch and zero, Ingrid returned to Bishopsgate where she was grateful to find a room at the Ilex Hotel. There seemed little point driving back to London when she had an appointment at the local police station in the morning.

  The Ilex Hotel was the sort of place guests at a nearby wedding would be checked into by the bridal party… if they had been invited out of duty instead of love. From the outside it looked like a residential home for the elderly, and inside the smell of disinfectant was redolent of county hospitals.

  “Just the one night?” the man on the reception desk asked, looking down at her muddy feet.

  “Correct.”

  “And would you like to include breakfast?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Her room was directly above the front door with a view over the parking lot. A row of shops on the opposite side of the street included a café that looked a far better breakfast option than the brittle bacon and stale croissants of a three-star hotel buffet.

  The room sported floral wallpaper and a pink patterned bedspread. It reminded her of the venues married men took hookers in 1980s TV shows. She tried to ignore the squeaking floorboards from the room above and plugged in her phone to charge. She looked for a safe for her Russian passport and embassy ID. It wasn’t in the closet and it wasn’t under the bed. There was no phone to call down to reception, so she headed back downstairs. When she closed the door behind her, it didn’t shut properly. She pushed it closed, but the lock wouldn’t turn.

  “Well, that’s just excellent.”

  The man on reception was watching TV. He muted it when he saw her. “Everything okay, madam?”

  “My door doesn’t lock.”

  “Hmmm.” He tilted his head to one side.