Flight Risk (An Ingrid Skyberg Mystery Book 7)

by Eva Hudson

  “Might as well take her to the top,” John said.

  “Cold, isn’t it?” Ringo said.

  Ingrid hadn’t noticed. Stress acted like a form of hypothermia, shutting down her extremities, pouring her energies into core cognitive functions.

  “Isn’t this high enough?” Paul asked.

  “Why not do it at the top?” John answered. “Let’s make sure.”

  On the eighth floor, planks of timber were stacked up, ready for workers who would never come. A flock of starlings erupted from the stack, their dark wings battering the air, hinging themselves upward and out beyond the confines of the building, expertly dodging the iron hook dangling down from the end of the rusted pulley.

  Ingrid stopped. There were only two floors left. The timber might be her best opportunity. She could vault over it, gain a second on them and bounce down the other stairwell or dive into the elevator shaft and hope to grab a cable.

  Hope to.

  “Move it,” John said.

  The four of them seemed very relaxed about their impending crime. Even Silicon Boy.

  “I said move it.”

  Ingrid made a show of catching her breath.

  “Now!”

  Ingrid glanced at the wood stack but did as she was told. Whatever opportunity was on the ninth floor, she would have to take it. The sweet stench of the landfill itched her nostrils and made her insides heave. At least she thought it was the stench. She counted the steps. One… two… three. Paul had already reached the ninth floor. His hulking figure blocked her path. Six… seven…

  Ringo was still holding the Sig. Even with his physique, his biceps had to be fractionally fatigued by now, his fingers incrementally chilled. She would have a second, maybe two, before he took the shot. She hoped it would be all she needed.

  Hoped.

  Nine… ten… eleven… Ingrid skipped the twelfth step and went straight for the thirteenth. She accelerated, catching Paul by surprise, and sprinted past him. She was three strides away and had covered twenty yards by the time John reached the top of the stairs, twenty-five by the time Ringo did.

  Ingrid drove her feet into the concrete and accelerated toward the elevator shaft before Ringo fired.

  Footsteps stampeded behind her. “Get down!” She couldn’t tell who was talking, and she wasn’t going to turn to find out.

  A shot tore through the air, its explosive sound bouncing off the bare concrete

  “You fucking idiot.” John’s voice. “It’s not going to look like suicide if she’s got a gunshot in her back is it?”

  Ingrid neared the shaft. It was a pitch dark inside. Momentum propelled her forward. There was no stopping now.

  Two more strides and she saw the shaft was empty. No cables, just a sheer drop of ninety feet. She was running too fast to stop. Ingrid leaned to one side, shifting her weight and curving her trajectory away from the opening. She leaned more, steering her body toward the concrete wall that enclosed the shaft. She leaped up, planted a foot on the wall and somersaulted backwards before landing and rolling. Paul grabbed at her jacket as she got to her feet, but Ingrid struggled free and powered away from him. She ran toward the edge of the building. She had twenty strides before she reached it.

  Her focus narrowed on the line where the concrete met the air. She blocked out everything else. All that mattered was the line. She adjusted her stride. There was no margin for error. Four, three, two… She planted her left foot and drove the ball of her right down onto the edge, launching herself outwards, her legs circling over the drop below. Her eyes zeroed in on the steel chain hanging down from the pulley. Both hands reached out for it. Ingrid grasped at the metal, her hands slipping on the wet steel until they grabbed onto the hook.

  She was falling. Time was passing too quickly. She was rattling right down. Her weight had activated the pulley and the ground was rushing up to meet her like a fist. With no counterweight, she was dropping fast. Too fast. The landing wouldn’t kill her, but it would sure as hell break her legs.

  She prepared for impact, lifting her knees and getting ready to roll.

  The chain tugged up sharply. Her icy fingers gripped the hook. She was suspended two floors up. She looked up. Ringo and Paul had jammed the pulley.

  “What are you waiting for?” John shouted. “Get down there!”

  Ingrid checked below. The mud was littered with concrete slabs and mesh sheets of rusted steel. Her old injury tore in her shoulder, radiating pain across her back. She couldn’t hold on. Heavy footsteps ricocheted inside the building.

  Ingrid picked a spot on the ground and let go, dropping into a debris-free patch. She softened her knees and rolled sideways, distributing the force. She pushed her fingers into the cold, wet mud and heaved herself up into a squat. She staggered upright and took a step. The right ankle was okay. The left ankle was okay.

  Now run.

  18

  If she ran back to the road, they would hunt her down in the van and make her the next hit-and-run victim. The galvanized steel gate was approximately one hundred and fifty yards away. It had to lead somewhere. Ingrid ran to it.

  Beyond the gate was a wide overgrown path enclosed by two tumbling hedgerows. Twining weeds curled around the gate. It hadn’t been opened for at least a year. It couldn’t lead anywhere important, but it was too late to change her mind.

  She dared to check behind her. The Beatles still hadn’t emerged from the building. Ringo would have taken up position, though. She would be in his crosshairs. If she stopped she was dead. Ingrid vaulted over the gate and landed on soft wet grass. It clung to her ankles as she powered on, putting as many yards between her and her pursuers as she could. A train rumbled in the distance.

  The grass thinned in places to reveal a covering of gravel. It looked like an access road, the sort that led to electricity substations or telephone exchanges. Dead ends, usually.

  The track curved a little. She ran hard and stayed as close to the hedge as she could, hoping the foliage would obscure her. Her lungs were starting to burn, but she had to keep moving.

  The gate rattled. She didn’t look to see who it was. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was staying alive. She had a lead of two hundred strides. Even a trained marksman with a moving target only had a thirty percent chance of a clean kill. Just keep running. The path curled around a bend, shielding her from whoever was chasing. The grass petered out and her sneakers slipped on the gravel. There was something in the ground up ahead. What was it? She couldn’t make it out.

  A square access hole cover.

  Ingrid snatched a look over her shoulder, crouched down and grasped the ring in the center of the heavy steel lid. The muscles tightened in her neck as she strained her entire body to move it. It gave a little. She leaned backward and it came loose with a searing, screeching scrape revealing a dark cylinder below. The gate clanged again. Now two of them were on the track.

  “Where is she?” South African accent. Paul’s voice.

  Whichever Beatle was with him was too breathless to reply.

  They would reach the bend any second. Ingrid looked at the hole, then looked at the hedge. A curtain of bindweed tumbled down over a thicket of brambles. The path ahead was long. When they turned the corner, they would take the shot.

  Hole or hedge?

  Hedge or hole?

  Ingrid lifted up the mat of weeds and crawled underneath. Paul’s footsteps vibrated the ground as he approached. She burrowed deeper, pressing herself under branches and brambles, her knees sinking into two winters’ worth of leaves. Her lungs demanded air, but she only offered them shallow, quiet breaths. Fear skated over her skin.

  Paul powered past, shaking the ground. A few seconds later, another pair of feet closed in on her. The footsteps stopped and Ingrid froze.

  “Here!” George’s voice

  “What?” Paul called back.

  “Down here.”

  Ingrid’s breathing quickened. There was a tremor in her right hand. She daren’t l
ook. She daren’t move. Was a piece of clothing visible? Between the twigs and branches she could see shards of daylight, a lead-light window of random shapes. The gray material of Paul’s sweatpants.

  “Look!”

  The gate clanged again. Soon they would all be there.

  “The drain, man,” George said. “The cover’s off.”

  Paul thundered, gravel crunching under his sneakers. “Really?”

  “Well, where else is she?”

  John shouted from down the path. “You got her?”

  “No, mate,” Paul yelled.

  “You think it’s a sewer?” George asked.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a real good place to leave her phone.”

  “Do it.”

  John’s footsteps were lighter. Probably something to do with the alligator skin shoes. “She down there?”

  “Reckon so,” George answered. He threw in the phone and it clanked as it bounced off the shaft’s walls.

  “What are you waiting for?” John asked.

  “What, me? I’m not going down there,” George said.

  “Yes, you fucking are. Look at the size of you. We’re not gonna fit, are we?”

  “What am I supposed do when I’m down there?”

  After a pause, John said, “Hold her head in the shit till she drowns.”

  “What about the suicide note?” Paul asked.

  “They’re not going to find the body for so long we don’t have to worry about that. Get down there.”

  They scraped the steel cover across the ground, grinding it over the metal lip with a howl that stabbed into Ingrid’s ears.

  “What if it’s a trap?” George’s voice. “What if she just pulled that open to make us think that’s where she went?”

  No one answered.

  “We’re all standing here like loons while she’s already a mile away.”

  “Or she’s hiding,” John said.

  Ingrid swallowed hard. Her face was almost numb.

  “Yeah, she could be hiding,” George said, a tinge of excitement in his voice at the prospect of not having to go into the sewer.

  “Okay,” John said. “You, go down there. You, you get the van. See if you can find a map of the sewers. Try and work out where she might surface and drive there.”

  “What are you going to do?” George asked.

  Ingrid heard the double click of a magazine being loaded into a semi-automatic. “I’m going to check around here. She might not have gone far. We meet back at the gate in thirty minutes.”

  Gravel scattered as they moved in different directions. George’s feet performed a slow, musical scale as he hit the rungs inside the shaft, each step a note lower than the last. But it was John’s prowling footsteps that Ingrid tuned into. He’d guessed right, and he had a gun. He kicked the undergrowth. He moved slowly, deliberately. He was listening.

  Ingrid’s pulse throbbed in her spine as the muscles stiffened in her back. Her thigh twitched. She had the beginnings of a cramp. The shoulder muscle she had torn on the pulley blazed.

  “Where are you, you little bitch?”

  He wasn’t moving away. It sounded like he was circling.

  “What can you see?” he shouted to George.

  “Fuck all.” His voice echoed up the shaft.

  Ingrid glimpsed the gray of John’s suit through the branches. “Use the flashlight on your phone.” His voice was amplified. He was crouched over the hole. “Is it dry?”

  “What do you think?”

  They had sent the wrong man down the drain. The others were military. They’d been through worse. Much worse. They would have sat for days in damp jungle camps or hidden in silence in storm drains until the enemy passed. The tech boy wouldn’t be able to hack it.

  Something rustled in the bramble and Ingrid stiffened. It rustled again. Her mouth fell open. She needed more air, but she dare not make a noise. Ingrid swallowed. She had to control her breathing. Little in, little out. Something moved again. Ingrid couldn’t turn to look. Her vision narrowed. She gasped.

  It was a wren, bouncing down from a branch and hopping over the leaves.

  Ingrid clenched her fists and held her breath. Had John heard her gasp? Why was he so quiet?

  George’s metallic percussion emanated from the drain. He was making his way back up.

  “What are you doing?” John shouted. He had moved further away.

  George clanged up to ground level.

  “What are you playing at?” John shouted

  George inhaled noisily. “Jesus, if she’s down there she deserves to live.”

  Ingrid flinched at the sound of a heavy crack.

  “Fuck you, Goldie.”

  So, John’s name was Goldie.

  “You not even going to give me a hand up?”

  “Don’t forget to put the cover back. If she is down there, let’s make it impossible for her to escape.”

  Ingrid listened as their footsteps receded. She let her breathing deepen. She unclenched her fists. After a few more minutes she adjusted her position, crunching the leaves beneath her knees then straightening her legs. What had John said? A rendezvous at the gate in thirty minutes. She could wait them out.

  She checked her watch. Nine forty. She needed to let Lexi know what had happened. Not turning up at the station house was a breach of her bail conditions. A warrant would automatically be issued for her arrest.

  Ingrid exhaled slowly. She couldn’t tell Lexi, could she? The Beatles had known she was about to talk to Thames Valley Police. Someone had told them, and that someone could have been her lawyer. An agency like Red Box would have spies everywhere, and either the Prius or her charge card had led them to the Ilex Hotel. Until Ingrid knew who the mole was, she couldn’t speak to anyone.

  If there was a silver lining to George throwing her phone into the sewer, it was that no one could track her. Just in case they could trace her via her Apple Watch, Ingrid loosened the strap and dropped it on the ground.

  From now on, she was on her own.

  19

  When she was confident the Beatles had left, Ingrid crawled out of her hiding place. She made her way back into Bishopsgate along the railway track to make sure she stayed out of view.

  Her shoulder felt bad. The muscles over her scapula were too painful to touch, let alone massage. She needed painkillers. And not the kind you could buy over the counter. On the outskirts of town, she spotted the monolithic metal cubes of the retail park. The blue and red Tesco sign called to her like a beacon.

  Ingrid was covered in mud from the knees down. Her jacket had gotten ripped on the brambles. She looked like a vagrant. She checked her pockets: the car key, a bank card that she could no longer use and just under fifty pounds in cash.

  Ingrid elicited several disapproving stares from the other customers in Tesco, but with the cash she had she was able to buy track pants and a sweatshirt, underwear and socks, and a pair of sneakers that were reduced by seventy percent, presumably because they were lime green. After a can of heat rub and pack of the strongest pain meds she could find, Ingrid had just enough left for a coffee and a pastry. She applied the rub, took the medicine, changed her clothes, and discarded the ruined ones in the restroom. Afterward, she settled into a chair in the in-store coffee shop. She needed to make the drink last. She had over two hours to wait.

  The Costa Coffee concession was in a gallery overlooking the supermarket floor, giving her a good view of the aisles below where couples fought about turkeys and rivals clawed special offers out of each other’s carts. With every sip of her long black, Ingrid found a new way to despise Marcus Williams. She hated the arrogance that had led him to believe he could ride a bike he hadn’t trained for. She detested the entitlement that let him think he could take any motorcycle he wanted. His confidence that his father’s money would make every problem disappear enraged her. But it was his lack of regard for human life—for Matthew Harding’s, for Steve’s, for hers—that she
truly loathed. The belief that his existence counted for more than other people’s, that he could commit a crime—that he could actually kill someone—and not have to face the consequences infuriated her. And, oh boy, did she want him to pay.

  Daddy’s billions wouldn’t go nearly so far in jail.

  The size of the operation to protect Williams stunned her. Ingrid pictured him on Greenacre Lane moments after the accident, phoning his father and requesting help. Daddy had probably told him to sit tight, to get the bike out of view, and to wait. He then called the same firm he used to get intel on rivals, dirt on employees, or accusers he wanted to silence. Within hours Red Box would have gotten the bike repaired and taken it back to the embassy. Then they infiltrated the security systems and either bribed or incentivized Steve to give up his life in London. Compromised contacts inside the police and forensics services were subsequently leaned on to frustrate any future inquiries.

  And when their coverup had been threatened with exposure, they had murdered Steve. Then they had tried to kill her. The damage to Williams’s reputation, and to his father’s investments, was so grave that no price was too high to prevent the hit-and-run becoming public knowledge. The desire to expose the conspiracy, and put Williams and his father in jail, burned white hot. She needed the witness to talk to her. She needed the Turkic woman’s testimony not because it would clear her name, but because it would ensure Williams spent the next two decades in jail.

  When the time came, Ingrid returned to the ladies’ room and made herself look as presentable as she could. She dampened her hands to style her hair, adding a little volume with the hot air hand dryer. She picked off twigs and leaves from her jacket and dabbed at the mud with handfuls of wet toilet paper. There was nothing she could do about the lime green sneakers, but she was satisfied she plausibly passed for a woman popping into the supermarket on her way home from the gym. Ingrid wanted to look as normal, and approachable, as possible.