Flight Risk (An Ingrid Skyberg Mystery Book 7)

by Eva Hudson

  “Yes?”

  “I need to speak to Katja.”

  Several conversations seemed to be going on behind him. “I see.” There was a pause. “Is she okay?” His English was precise and slow.

  “I saw her yesterday,” Ingrid said.

  He relayed this to the other people in the room who made jubilant sounds.

  “Where is she?” he asked. “We hear nothing for four weeks. My mother very worried.”

  Ingrid exhaled. It wasn’t the trafficker. “She is still in the same place.”

  “I see.” His intonation suggested this was a phrase he had picked up from movies but did not properly comprehend.

  “Do you know how I can contact her?”

  He made some unintelligible noises. He was being bombarded with questions. “Sorry. Can you repeat?”

  “I want to speak to Katja.”

  He spoke rapidly in Turkmen, silencing the conversations behind him. “But you saw her yesterday. I do not understand.”

  Ingrid took a deep breath. “My name is Ingrid Skyberg.” She hesitated. “I work for the police.” It was more straightforward than explaining she was employed by the FBI. “Katja was a witness to an accident—”

  “Accident?” In the background, several people gasped.

  “She is fine. She saw the accident. I need to talk to her.”

  “Ah, okay.” Again, he spoke in Turkmen and the other voices sing-songed over each other.

  “Do you have a number for her? A phone number?”

  “No. She has very important job. Always working. She say not to call her.” He paused. “She always call here. My uncle’s house. Same time every week and my mother make sure she is here. But she not call for one month.”

  “Do you have an email address for her?”

  “No. No email. She is okay, yes?”

  “Yes, she is well,” Ingrid said. If you call being scared and imprisoned ‘well’. “When I speak to her, I will ask her to call you, if you like.”

  More Turkmen, more chattering.

  “How you speak to her? You not have number.”

  He had a point. “I will find her. When I do, is there a message I can give her?”

  He relayed Ingrid’s question, and the conversations exploded behind him. “Yes, yes you must. Please tell her Krystyna, her sister, tell her Krystyna had baby. A girl. Xenia. You tell her this, yes?”

  “Yes, I will tell her. And I will also ask her to call you.”

  She thanked him for his help and ended the call. To talk to Katja, Ingrid was going to have to get inside Uppenham Hall. She had already worked out how to do it. She opened a new browser and was about to start typing when a loud crash made her jump. Her breath stalled.

  “What the?”

  Ingrid pushed the chair back slowly, careful not to make a noise, and crept out onto the landing. She stood perfectly still and listened. Was someone in the house? A desiccated plant sat in a ceramic pot next to the banister. She picked it up and prepared to throw it at whoever came up the stairs.

  She heard whistling from out on the street. She listened hard, her senses elevated, but there were no other noises coming from within the house. Still carrying the plant pot, she started down the stairs. Ingrid paused on the third step. A figure was visible through the frosted glass of the front door. How had Red Box found her so quickly? A trace on Marshall’s phone? His landline?

  The figure moved. Ingrid’s mouth fell open. She waited.

  A hand pushed an envelope through the mail slot. It fluttered down to the mat, landing next to a scattering of new mail. When the hand withdrew, the mail slot snapped back loudly. That’s what she had heard. She almost dropped the plant pot with relief.

  Back at the desk, Ingrid’s pulse took time returning to normal. She stared at the open browser. What had she been about to search for? The shock of the mailman, or the remnants of the tequila, were slowing her thought processes.

  “Ah, yes.”

  The party planner. There had been a name on the van that pulled out of Uppenham Hall. It’d had a London connection. Something upmarket like Buckingham or Kensington. Definitely a place.

  Mayfair.

  Mayfair Events. Ingrid had found and dialed the number before she’d worked out what she was going to say.

  “Mayfair. Please hold.” The woman who answered held her hand over the receiver and conducted a conversation with someone else. Ingrid couldn’t decipher any words, only the tone: stressed. “Hi. Mayfair. How can I help you?”

  Here goes.

  “Hello there, I’ve been asked to liaise with you about the…” Ingrid stumbled, unsure what was going to come out of her mouth next. “…ice sculpture. For the party at Uppenham Hall.” Did the super-rich still do ice sculptures, or were they very 2005?

  “Uppenham Hall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh dear. Hold on.”

  The line went silent apart from intermittent beeps. The ‘oh dear’ was worrying.

  “Julie speaking.” She sounded even more harassed. “You’re calling about Uppenham?”

  “Hi, yes, I’ve been told to coordinate with you about the ice sculpture.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes. When should we deliver it?”

  “Nobody told me about an ice sculpture.”

  Ingrid stalled for time. “Oh. I’m sorry. Do you not want it?”

  “Who ordered it?”

  “Um.” Should she say the sheikh did? “The name I have on the order here is Sammy.”

  “Oh, God. Please tell me it isn’t rude.”

  “Rude?”

  “It’s not a giant cock and balls or anything, is it?”

  Ingrid tried not to laugh. “No, no, it isn’t. Nothing like that.”

  “Thank goodness. How quickly will it melt?”

  Ingrid had to make something up. “It sits on a refrigerated plate. It’s good for a few hours.”

  “Ah, okay. And where is it for? Entrance hall or dining hall?”

  “Er. Entrance hall.”

  Julie made some notes, tapping her keyboard loudly. “Best bring it in last, then. Don’t want it getting bashed. Shall we say four?”

  “Today?

  “Well, it’s not going to be any bloody use to them tomorrow, is it?”

  26

  Ingrid wouldn’t be able to rent a car without ID, even with Jen’s credit card. She was going to have to take the Harley, which presented her with a minor problem. The waitress outfit was much more likely to blend in at a party than the motorcycle messenger look.

  She found Marshall’s bike gear in a closet under the stairs. He had different clothing for different seasons. Unfortunately, his winter riding jacket was made of safety-conscious white leather with lime green flashes.

  “You were always such a poseur.”

  With the helmet, she looked like a Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger. At least his riding pants were predominantly black. She had no choice but to wear his boots, so she scrabbled around in his closet for his thickest socks and a backpack to put her waitress outfit in. She shoved Jen’s credit card and iPhone into her pockets, then looked at the burner phone. Jen might try to contact her on it, so she tossed it into the backpack.

  The battery on the Harley had gone flat, so she bump started it and sped out west towards Burnt Oak. It was good to be back on two wheels, though she was very glad of Marshall’s thermal layers and his heated hand grips. Forty-five minutes later, Ingrid pulled up at the main gates of Uppenham.

  The house itself was not visible from the road, just a stone gatehouse and the beginning of a driveway that curved away through a thicket of trees. A security guard stepped out of the gatehouse carrying a clipboard and trudged through the sleet to the locked gates. The way his jacket stretched across his belly suggested he had put on weight since he had been measured for his uniform.

  “Collecting a package,” Ingrid said.

  He looked at his notes. “Got nothing for you.”

  “Perhaps
I’m picking up from the main house?” she said, a little too hopefully.

  He clenched his teeth together. “I doubt that very much. I’ll call the house. See what it is.”

  Ingrid kept the engine running and held tight to the heated grips while she figured out a different ruse to get inside the grounds.

  “Nope, nothing for you, I’m afraid.” His tone was infused with the whine of someone trying to impersonate a posh person. “I suggest you contact your dispatch center.”

  “I think I know why it isn’t on your list. I’m collecting something for Mayfair Events, not the homeowner.”

  “Is it to do with the party?”

  “I guess.”

  “You want to try the rear entrance. It’s right over the other side of the estate.”

  He gave her directions to the tradesmen’s entrance Ingrid was already familiar with. On her way to the rear gate, she spotted a narrow turnoff that might offer a shortcut and took it. It was little more than a forester’s track, and she was wary of getting the Harley stuck in mud. It was hardly a dirt bike. She found a clearing and decided to abandon her ride.

  The map on her phone was little help, but she trusted her sense of direction. She secured the helmet on the handlebars and headed off on foot. The gloomy woods gave way to open fields that shimmered under a veil of frost. She hoped her unorthodox route would allow her to reach Uppenham’s grounds without being seen by either a traffic camera, or a security patrol.

  Ingrid unzipped Marshall’s jacket. Walking in thermals and leathers was an excellent workout, regardless of the temperature. The boots slipped and rubbed, even with the extra pair of socks, but she was thankful they were waterproof. An occasional roar of a speeding car on Greenacre Lane rolled up the valley, reminding her of the accident that had brought her here.

  When a succession of headlight beams followed the same path at the far end of the field, Ingrid knew she had found the track that led to the tradesmen’s gate. She hurried toward it but was prevented from reaching it by a thick tangle of bare elder trees and hawthorn bushes, all strangled by ivy. Her body temperature fell as she slowed to look for a breach in the bushes and she zipped back up. A vehicle rattled up the track, passing just a few yards from her, but there was no way of getting through the hedge. She walked a few hundred yards in search of a gap, and then a few hundred more in the other direction, but was still trapped in the field on the wrong side of the track.

  Another vehicle approached and Ingrid stood still, fearful its headlights might glimpse her ridiculous jacket through the foliage. It slowed as it passed her, then stopped a few seconds later and applied the handbrake. She was closer to the gate than she’d realized.

  A smattering of voices, a whirring of electric gates, and the diesel engine coughed back to life. She’d been so concerned with getting onto the track she had forgotten to think how she’d get through the gates. On the plus side, she hadn’t heard any dogs.

  Ingrid kept searching for an exit, a gate or a style. She was beginning to think she’d made a mistake and would have to retrace her steps and get back on the bike. Then she noticed the dark branches of a towering chestnut tree stretching up into the steel-gray sky.

  Maybe she didn’t need a gap.

  Good motorcycle leathers were the modern equivalent of chain mail. She wouldn’t want to test them against a medieval lance, but she’d once broken up a street fight without a flick-knife making it through to the skin. A couple of seasons of brambles and ivy were no match for her reinforced jacket. And the boots would withstand a fox bite if she trod on its lair.

  Ingrid pressed into the wet, prickly foliage and got as close to the chestnut tree as she could. She reached up for its lowest branch and grasped it through the articulated riding gloves. Her injured shoulder complained, but she ignored the pain. She’d had worse injuries. She wedged a boot into a cleft in the bark and hoisted herself up. She straddled the branch and listened, making sure she hadn’t sparked the interest of a security patrol. Ingrid pulled herself across the branches to reach the other side of the tree. Now she needed a way to climb down to the track without twisting an ankle.

  Another vehicle came up from Greenacre Lane. She watched the high beams fracture through the branches. She didn’t have time to clamber down before it got close. Marshall’s white jacket was too visible. There was no way they wouldn’t see her.

  Govno!

  She stretched out and lay flat on the branch, hoping to obscure as much of the white as possible from the driver’s view. The vehicle was close enough now to hear it had a diesel engine. A truck, most likely. She gripped the wet branch with her thighs and tried to keep still. When the truck rounded a bend, she saw it was a box van, the kind with a flat roof. She held her breath as its headlights swooped in her direction. The driver changed gear and slowed to navigate a puddle as he passed underneath her. Ingrid took her chance. She released her grip and dropped down, clattering onto the van’s roof.

  If the driver noticed, he didn’t stop. Ingrid pressed herself against the cold metal, lying as flat as she could until the driver came to a stop and scraped on the handbrake.

  “Name?”

  “Dixter. Dixter’s the florist. Should be on your list.”

  Ingrid tried not to breathe, fearful the mist would catch the headlights and alert the guard.

  “Back unlocked?”

  “Should be.”

  The guard’s footsteps squelched as he walked around the van. She felt the clunk as he unlocked the door. The van rocked to one side as he opened it. Ingrid closed her eyes. The scent of lilies drifted over her.

  “You might want to take a look at this,” the guard said.

  Ingrid’s heart froze. The driver shouted through his open window, “What is it?” His door cranked open, and he jumped down, the van swaying as he did so. Ingrid listened to his shoes squish into the mud.

  “Oh, great, he said. Julie’ll be thrilled about that.” He sighed heavily. “Maybe we can turn them into posies.”

  He stomped back to the cab, muttering about five hundred pounds worth of ruined roses. He slammed the door so hard Ingrid’s steel-toed boot bounced onto the metal roof.

  “What was that?” the guard asked.

  Ingrid tried not to breathe.

  “Probably something else falling over.”

  The gates opened, and the van made its way down the drive, snaking through the valley toward the house. After two hundred yards, Ingrid hoisted herself up onto all fours. She wriggled to the rear of the van and jumped. She rolled on impact and stayed low to the ground.

  When the driver passed over the brow of a hill, Ingrid got to her feet and started walking.

  27

  Ingrid moved away from the driveway for the cover of the woods. The white leather jacket was designed to be visible. It would be impossible to hide if she got swooped by headlights of the next vehicle through the gates. Or a patrol guard’s flashlight.

  Ingrid studied Uppenham Hall from a vantage point on the hill above. Sited in a cleft in the valley, the stately home was almost perfectly square and had been constructed around a central courtyard. Built of huge slabs of stone, its austere Georgian facades were adorned with domed turrets in each corner, reminiscent of tiny observatories. Visitors arriving through the main gate would pass through undulating grounds dotted with dovecotes, ponds, Scotch pines and Henry Moore sculptures to arrive at a grand porticoed entrance. Several vehicles were parked in front of the Hall, two of which were illuminated by bright arc lights. Ingrid couldn’t quite tell from such a distance, but they looked like racing cars.

  To the rear, a kitchen garden of ordered vegetable beds was enclosed inside a rectangle of red brick walls. It sat in the middle of a lawn that stretched toward a cluster of outbuildings; stables, greenhouses and bothies. Another van descended to the house from the tradesmen’s gate, its yellow high beams carving through a settling mist of twilight blues. The entire valley was fringed with woodland. The hoot of an owl drifted low acros
s the landscape. It was magical.

  The building had five stories. Only one light was visible on the top floor at the rear. A few more lights were illuminated on the third floor, but most of the activity appeared to be at ground level. The van parked next to the other tradesmen’s vehicles near the open back door, which cast a rhomboid of light over the gravel driveway. Ingrid picked out a route through the folds in the hill that enabled her to creep toward the rear entrance without being seen.

  There was no obvious security presence, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. On a private estate where grouse shooting took place, there was a high probability there were guards who would legally be carrying a shotgun. And they’d have dogs. A woman with a clipboard—arms flapping, voice audible a hundred yards away—came to the back door to monitor the unpacking of the flowers.

  The florists ferried displays from the back of their van into the house, dodging and weaving their way past a team delivering Christmas trees. Ingrid walked briskly, purposefully, toward the open doors of the florist’s van. She swiped a bouquet of lilies and held it in front of her face.

  “Where do you want this?” she asked the woman with the clipboard.

  “That looks like a dining hall one, thanks.”

  Ingrid stepped inside, wiped her boots on the mat and strode across limestone flags that had been worn and warped by the centuries. Her leather pants squeaked. The boots clomped. She was too audible as well as too visible. She followed wet footprints into the heart of the house, and when they petered out, headed toward the noise until she reached a galleried hall with two long dining tables. Draped in white linen and crowned with enormous candelabras, each table was set for forty guests.

  “Ah. Far table please.”

  She put the display down and asked the woman, who appeared to be in charge, if there was somewhere she could get changed.

  “Are you with Maclaren or Ferrari?” she asked.

  “Um.” That was not a question Ingrid had anticipated. “Maclaren.”

  “If you ask for Sophie, she’ll point you toward the green room.”